Satellite and Nuclear Issues
Includes Six Party Talks
2015
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Much material on this issue finds its way to the US and other pages, when the emphasis seems to be on state-to-state relations. The exception being the Six-Party Talks which are usually posted here.
for some key documents see 2011 page

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• December
• November
• October
• September
• August
• July
• June
• May
• April
• March
• February
• January

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DECEMBER 2015

• High Resolution Satellite Imagery Shows Continued Tunnel Construction at Punggye-ri
  By 38 North 30 December 2015 A 38 North exclusive, with analysis by Jack Liu. Summary New high-resolution commercial satellite imagery shows continued excavation of the new nuclear test tunnel (identified earlier this month) at Punggye-ri. Additionally, imagery has identified new activity at the North Portal (formerly known as the West Portal[1]) at a test tunnel under excavation since May 2013. Whether this activity is associated with maintenance or some other purpose remains unclear.
• North Korea may have to choose between weapons, economy
  North Korea’s policy of developing nuclear weapons is not compatible with badly needed reforms, analysts say. By Elizabeth Shim | Dec. 22, 2015 at 9:51 AM A North Korean man sells contraband pickled eggs, cigarettes, alcohol and ginseng to Korean, Japanese and Chinese tourists on the Yalu River, north of Dandong, China's larger border city with North Korea. The North Korean regime is expected to launch economic reforms involving five-year plans in May 2016. File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo SEOUL, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- North Korea could come to a fork in the road in 2016 and may need to decide between its nuclear weapons program and economic development – but Pyongyang also could step up proliferation if Kim Jong Un cannot find an "exit strategy." The Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a South Korean think tank, stated in its 2016 forecast that North Korea's dilemma could be amplified by a "serious" food shortage owing to a recent drought, the Korea Herald reported. "As the side effect of the serious droughts, there may be a severe food shortage and a variety of social problems [arising from the crisis]," the institute said in its annual report. The food crisis is serious, and a second famine cannot be ruled out, the report read, referring to a catastrophic food shortage in the mid-90s that killed 2 million North Koreans, according to U.N. estimates. The North Korean regime is expected to launch economic reforms involving five-year plans in May 2016, when the Seventh Congress of the Workers' Party convenes in more than two decades. But North Korea's policy of developing nuclear weapons is not compatible with badly needed reforms. [Byungjin] [Cliché] [Logic]
• N.K. to face greater dilemma over its nuke policy in 2016
  Published : 2015-12-22 18:04 North Korea is expected to face a greater dilemma next year over its policy of simultaneously developing nuclear weapons and its economy, a local think tank said Tuesday, noting that it would struggle to find a way out of it through provocative moves such as nuclear and missile tests. The dilemma may further deepen as the North is likely to face a “serious” shortage of food, caused by this year’s severe droughts, lack of international aid and sanctions over its nuclear and missile development, according to the 2016 forecast by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies. “As the side effect of the serious droughts, there may be a severe food shortage and a variety of social problems (arising from the crisis),” the institute said in its forecast released to the press on Tuesday. “We cannot rule out an emergency situation such as the second ‘Arduous March’ although the level of the (food) crisis would be lower than what the North went through in the mid-1990s.” [Byungjin] [Cliché] [Logic]
• 1950s U.S. Nuclear Target List Offers Chilling Insight
  By Scott Shane Dec. 22, 2015 Washington — Target category No. 275 from the nuclear target list for 1959 may be the most chilling. It is called simply “Population.” For the first time, the National Archives and Records Administration has released a detailed list of the United States’ potential targets for atomic bombers in the event of war with the Soviet Union, showing the number and the variety of targets on its territory, as well as in Eastern Europe and China. It lists many targets for “systematic destruction” in major cities, including 179 in Moscow (like “Agricultural Equipment” and “Transformers, Heavy”), 145 in Leningrad and 91 in East Berlin. The targets are referred to as DGZs or “designated ground zeros.” While many are industrial facilities, government buildings and the like, one for each city is simply designated “Population.” “It’s disturbing, for sure, to see the population centers targeted,” said William Burr, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, a research group at George Washington University that obtained the target list in response to a request first made in 2006. Mr. Burr, who specializes in nuclear history, said he believed it was the most detailed target list the Air Force had ever made public. The targets are identified only generically, with code numbers that correspond to specific locations. The exact addresses and names of facilities from that period are in a still-classified “Bombing Encyclopedia,” which Mr. Burr said he was trying to get declassified. [Nuclear strategy]
• Elon Musk’s SpaceX returns to flight and pulls off dramatic, historic landing
  By Christian Davenport December 21 at 8:46 PM ? A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida before the reusable main-stage booster turned around, soared back to Cape Canaveral and landed safely near its launch pad. (Reuters) CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket at its landing pad here Monday evening in its first flight since its rocket exploded six months ago. The historic landing, the first time a rocket launched a payload into orbit and then returned safely to Earth, was cheered as a sign that SpaceX, the darling of the commercial space industry, has its momentum back. "The Falcon has landed," a SpaceX commentator said on the live webcast, as workers at its headquarters went wild, chanting "USA! USA!" Monday’s flight, initially delayed because of technical concerns, was the second time in a month that a billionaire-backed venture launched a rocket to space and recovered it. And it represents yet another significant step forward in the quest to open up the cosmos to the masses. In a call with reporters, Musk said that it appeared the stage landed "dead center on the landing pad. ... We could not have asked for a better mission." He called it a "revolutionary moment." Typically, rocket boosters are used once, burning up or crashing into the ocean after liftoff. But Musk, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and Tesla, and Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com who has his own space company, have been working on creating reusable rockets that land vertically by using their engine thrust. If they are able to recover rockets and fly them again and again, it would dramatically lower the cost of space flight. [Satellite] [Privatisation]
• U.S. Cold War Nuclear Target Lists Declassified for First Time
  According to 1956 Plan, H-Bombs were to be Used Against Priority “Air Power” Targets in the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe Major Cities in Soviet Bloc, Including East Berlin, Were High Priorities in “Systematic Destruction” for Atomic Bombings Plans to Target People (“Population”) Violated International Legal Norms SAC Wanted a 60 Megaton Bomb, Equivalent to over 4,000 Hiroshima Atomic Weapons National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 538 Edited by William Burr Posted - December 22, 2015 [Nuclear strategy]
• A New ICBM for North Korea?
  By Schilling and Lewis and Schmerler 22 December 2015 By John Schilling, Jeffrey Lewis and David Schmerler Executive Summary The intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) displayed by North Korea during the military parade in October appears quite different from the versions seen in 2012 and 2013, but a close examination reveals as many similarities as differences. The missile has been shortened and simplified, with two stages instead of three and a blunt warhead replacing the narrow triconic design. The underlying technology is mostly the same—a blend of North Korean engineering and Cold War leftovers from the Soviet Union—but the structural design has been substantially improved. There is reason to suspect that the new structural technology was illicitly obtained from Ukrainian sources. The overall effect is that the missile’s performance is largely unchanged (and remains quite marginal for an ICBM), but the potential reliability has been substantially improved. (However, such a substantial design change late in the missile’s development will likely delay its entry into service until 2020 or beyond. [ICBM]
• NK in middle stage of H-bomb development
  By Jun Ji-hye North Korea is believed to have entered the middle stage of developing a hydrogen bomb, according to defense officials here, Tuesday. Some, including retired Army Brigadier General Lee Sang-chul who is now director of the Korea Arms Verification Agency at the Ministry of National Defense, say the Kim Jong-un regime may have developed a "boosted fission weapon." The development of the weapon, which is said to be two to five times more destructive than an atomic bomb, means that the North has reached the middle stage of producing a hydrogen bomb, they say. "North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's claim that the North has the hydrogen bomb seems highly likely to be aimed at showing off its military might to the North Korean people, but the possible appearance of a boosted fission weapon is threatening enough," he said. He made the remarks during an academic conference discussing the direction of the government's North Korea policy, held at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Monday. [H-Bomb] [Nuclear weapons]
• The IAEA’s “Final Assessment”
  by Gareth Porter December 18, 2015 The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) assessment has cleared the way for the board of governors to end the Agency’s extraordinary investigation into accusations of Iran’s past nuclear weapons work. But a closer examination of the document reveals much more about the political role that the Agency has played in managing the Iran file. Contrary to the supposed neutral and technical role that Director General Yukiya Amano has constantly invoked and the news media has long accepted without question, the Agency has actually been serving as prosecutor for the United States in making a case that Iran has had a nuclear weapons program. [IAEA] [UNUS] [Iran]
• Researcher: North Korea could have hydrogen bomb by 2020
  Posted on : Dec.18,2015 15:40 KST A 100-kiloton yield would be five times higher than the bombs the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki North Korea could have a boosted fission nuclear weapon with a force of 100 kilotons by 2020, a researcher is claiming. The boosted weapon, which generates greater explosive force through the placement of fusion fuel at the bomb‘s center, is considered to represent an intermediate stage between a regular atomic bomb and hydrogen bomb. Joel Wit, a visiting researcher at Johns Hopkins University and founder of the North Korea website 38 North, made the claim during a talk on Dec. 16 with foreign correspondents in Washington. “Our projection is that by 2020, they could reach the deployment of a single-stage thermonuclear weapon. They could also make significant progress on the two-stage, the larger yield nuclear weapon,” Wit said. Similar predictions have been made by South Korean scientists. The 100-kiloton yield would be five times higher than the 20-kiloton force of the bombs that the US dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Nuclear weapons are generally classified at 20 kt for the atomic bomb, 40 to 150 kt for boosted weapons, and one megaton (1,000 kt) for hydrogen bombs. Wit also predicted that North Korea could make significant progress in developing a hydrogen bomb by 2020, as both boosted weapons and hydrogen bombs used the same fusion technology. Based on these technical predictions, Wit said North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s public statements about hydrogen bomb capabilities appear to be only propaganda for now. Wit said the development was, “technically unlikely, but boosting yields with fusion fuels is not.” he explained. Wit also noted that developing a boosted weapon by 2020 would require nuclear tests. “One clue for us would be if North Korea began work on digging at a different location that would be more suitable for testing a greater explosive force. So far, there hasn’t been any activity like that,” he said. Wit went on to describe the Barack Obama administration’s policy of “strategic patience” toward North Korea as a failure and reiterate the need for discussions with Pyongyang on a possible peace treaty and normalization of relations. By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent [Nuclear weapons]
• Weapon claim reflects DPRK's security concerns
  Updated: 2015-12-14 08:14 By Zheng Jiyong (China Daily) On Thursday, Kim Yong-un, the leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was quoted by the Korean Central News Agency as saying his state is ready to defend its sovereignty and dignity with hydrogen bombs it had developed itself. That made headlines worldwide. But in fact, the possibility of the DPRK owning hydrogen bombs is rather low. To produce a hydrogen bomb, a state needs very high technologies and good supporting industries, which the DPRK does not have. Besides, it would be impossible to test a hydrogen bomb without it being known. Some may argue that tests can be simulated on computers, but the DPRK has no such high-speed computer with which to carry out such simulations. [Nuclear weapons]
• Did Somebody Say H-bomb?
  By Jeffrey Lewis 14 December 2015 The sun is a miasma Of incandescent plasma The sun’s not simply made out of gas No, no, no The sun is a quagmire It’s not made of fire Forget what you’ve been told in the past ~ They Might Be Giants Five years ago, I opened an article about the possibility of a North Korean thermonuclear weapon with a few lines from a song record by They Might Be Giants, Why Does the Sun Shine? Two things I did not realize at the time. First, it was a cover—the song was actually written by Hy Zaret, who is more famous for Unchained Melody, a.k.a. that song from Ghost with the pottery wheel. Second, Zaret should stick to scoring Demi Moore romance movies; the science is wrong. It’s really not an excellent description of the composition of the sun. TMBG recorded a correction, Why Does the Sun Really Shine. Take a listen. With that out of the way, what else should we revisit about the subject of North Korea’s “H-bomb”? The subject is in the news again. Kim Jong Un visited a North Korean historical site and, according to KCNA, noted that the country was “a powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate self-reliant A-bomb and H-bomb to reliably defend its sovereignty and the dignity of the nation.” [Nuclear weapons]
• Kim Jong-un and Hydrogen Bomb
  Konstantin Asmolov Sensational news! Pyongyang has another superweapon! On December 10, Kim Jong-un delivered a speech at the country’s first weapons factory in the Phyongchon District of Pyongyang, which commenced operations in 1945. Today the factory is regarded as the site of special historical significance and pride. The leader’s speech was naturally dedicated to the achievements of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the military industry. The North Korean leader made a remark during his speech saying that the country had managed to become “a powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate a self-reliant A-bomb and H-bomb to reliably defend its sovereignty and the dignity of the nation. By the time the original utterance made by the North Korean leader had been translated (with some of its meaning ‘lost’), it sounded almost as alarming as “Pyongyang is about to blow up an H-bomb!” Therefore, it would be sensible to explain to the readers what it takes to create an A- or an H-bomb and what phases must be completed before one can claim that they have such a weapon. First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/12/15/kim-jong-un-and-hydrogen-bomb/ [Nuclear weapons]
• N.Korea Has H-Bomb, Says Kim Jong-un
  North Korea has turned into a "powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate a hydrogen bomb," leader Kim Jong-un claimed Thursday. Kim was speaking during a visit to the recently renovated Pyongchon revolutionary site in Pyongyang. Kim said the bomb would be detonated "to reliably defend the sovereignty and dignity of the nation," according to the official [North] Korean Central News Agency
• What if NK had H-bomb?
  By Oh Young-jin More often than not, North Korea has proved to be a habitual, pathological liar, so much so that, even in a rare event it doesn't lie, other nations would take it as a lie in a knee-jerk reaction. Remember the boy who cried wolf in an Aesop fable. During his tour of a site commemorating his "revolutionary" progeny Thursday, the North's young dictator, Kim Jong-un, indicated that his country has developed a hydrogen bomb. Experts immediately called its bluff. A government official said that Pyongyang doesn't have technologies required to develop such a bomb, also called thermonuclear bomb, which is many times more destructive than atomic bombs, dismissing Kim's remark as nothing more than "figure of speech." Still, Kim's claim needs looking at with gravity from two aspects: its ongoing attempt to win an internationally recognized status as nuclear weapon state and lack of an effective way to thwart the rogue state's such effort. [Nuclear weapons]
• IRRADIATED
  The hidden legacy of 70 years of atomic weaponry: At least 33,480 Americans dead
  Will the nation’s new nuclear age yield more unwanted fallout?
  December 11, 2015 By Rob Hotakainen, Lindsay Wise, Frank Matt and Samantha Ehlinger McClatchy Washington Bureau JACKSON, S.C. Byron Vaigneur watched as a brownish sludge containing plutonium broke through the wall of his office on Oct. 3, 1975, and began puddling four feet from his desk at the Savannah River nuclear weapons plant in South Carolina. The radiation from the plutonium likely started attacking his body instantly. He’d later develop breast cancer and, as a result of his other work as a health inspector at the plant, he’d also contract chronic beryllium disease, a debilitating respiratory condition that can be fatal. “I knew we were in one helluva damn mess,” said Vaigneur, now 84, who had a mastectomy to cut out the cancer from his left breast and now is on oxygen, unable to walk more than 100 feet on many days. He says he’s ready to die and has already decided to donate his body to science, hoping it will help others who’ve been exposed to radiation. [Nuclear weapons] [Collateral]
• Final Assessment on Past and Present Outstanding Issues regarding Iran’s Nuclear Programme
  A. Introduction 1. This report by the Director General to the Board of Governors, in line with the Road-map for the clarification of past and present outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear programme (Road-map),1 includes the final assessment of all past and present outstanding issues, as set out in the Director General’s report in November 2011 (GOV/2011/65).2 This assessment is based on all safeguards-relevant information available to the Agency, including that acquired through the implementation of Iran’s NPT Safeguards Agreement,3 the Framework for Cooperation,4 including the Road-map, and the Joint Plan of Action (JPA).5 [Iran] [UNUS] [IAEA]
• New report confirms Iran's nuclear weapons program
  Far from being the whitewash some had predicted, a new report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) states clearly that Iran had a nuclear weapons program until 2003 and continued some research for six more years. In a crucial new report by the IAEA, Iran and the UN nuclear watchdog agreed to disagree about key aspects of Iran’s nuclear program. Author Barbara Slavin Posted December 2, 2015 The highly anticipated document on the possible military dimensions (PMD) of the Iranian nuclear program, however, broke little new ground in terms of what the international intelligence community already knew. Experts said the findings are unlikely to impede implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) curbing Iran's nuclear program for at least a decade in return for relief of economic sanctions. Gary Samore, a nuclear expert at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, told Al-Monitor in an email that the IAEA report "is a very solid technical judgment by the IAEA, not intimidated by Iran's threats." [IAEA] [UNUS] [Iran]
• Addressing North Korea’s Nuclear Problem
  Policy Innovation Memorandum No. 54 Author: Scott A. Snyder, Senior Fellow for Korea Studies and Director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy Since defecting from Six Party negotiations on denuclearization in 2008, North Korea has pursued nuclear development unchecked by international constraints. Barack Obama's administration has demanded that Pyongyang make a strategic choice to denuclearize and tried to build a regional consensus opposing North Korea's nuclear efforts, but it has been unable to halt the country's nuclear weapons development. Instead, North Korea's continued nuclear and missile development is designed to force U.S. policymakers to make an undesirable choice: either acquiesce to the reality of a nuclear North Korea or mobilize international support for the destabilization of the North Korean regime. To stop the North Korean nuclear threat, the United States should take three steps. First, Washington should increase pressure on Pyongyang so that the regime recognizes its existential choice between survival and nuclear status. Second, the United States should pursue five-party talks (Six Party framework members minus North Korea) to develop a viable pathway for North Korea to survive and benefit from denuclearization. Such a regionally supported consensus on a route to denuclearization would seek to induce a debate inside North Korea regarding the costs and benefits of its pursuit of nuclear status. And third, the United States should encourage China and Russia to withdraw political support for and increase pressure on North Korea until the regime commits to denuclearization. [US NK policy] [Threat] [MISCOM]
• New Nuclear Test Tunnel Under Construction at North Korea’s Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site
  By 38 North 02 December 2015 A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Jeffrey Lewis Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates that North Korea is excavating a new tunnel for nuclear testing at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site. This tunnel is in a new area of the site in addition to the three others where the North has either conducted nuclear tests or excavated tunnels in the past. While there are no indications that a nuclear test is imminent, the new tunnel adds to North Korea’s ability to conduct additional detonations at Punggye-ri over the coming years if it chooses to do so.[1] Figure 1. Portals at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site. The new tunnel lies northwest of the test site’s Main Support Area. A review of imagery over the past year shows significant construction in the area beginning in April, including new covered structures and what appear to be logs for construction along the Changuk stream. [Test] [Media]
• Australia’s opposition to a ban on nuclear weapons
  by Tim Wright, contributing author December 1, 2015 Tim Wright is Asia-Pacific director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) (www.icanw.org). Australia has positioned itself as the de facto leader of a loose grouping of US-allied nations working to prevent the start of negotiations on a global treaty outlawing nuclear weapons. At this year’s session of the UN General Assembly’s First Committee on disarmament, Australia coordinated several joint statements intended to thwart moves towards a ban. For the past two years, it has been among the most vocal and active opponents of the fast-growing movement to prohibit the use, production and stockpiling of nuclear weapons, which are the only WMD not yet explicitly banned. It has refused to accept the view of four-fifths of the UN membership that any use of nuclear weapons would be unacceptable on humanitarian grounds. Indeed, it has sought to establish a counter-narrative: that humanitarian concerns must be balanced against the (supposed) security benefits of nuclear weapons. [Australia] [Nuclear weapons] [Nuclear umbrella]
• Eight countries. 2,054 nuclear tests. 70 years.
  In the name of national security, eight countries have tested nuclear weapons all over the world since 1945, frequently near populated places. By Kevin Schaul Nov. 27, 2015 Eight countries have performed nuclear tests. The United States and U.S.S.R. have performed the most explosive tests in history. “Yield,” a measure of how much energy an explosion releases, is measured in kilotons — one equalling about the power of 1,000 tons of TNT. Both nuclear superpowers have performed nuclear tests with yields of at least 10,000 kilotons (at scale above: ). The United States is the only country that has used a nuclear weapon in war. Those destructive detonations — in Japan at Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and at Nagasaki three days later — were just 15 () and 21 () kilotons. [Test]
• N.Korean Missile Test Goes Awry
  North Korea failed to launch a ballistic missile from a submarine into the East Sea on Saturday, government sources here said. The sources said South Korean and U.S. intelligence agencies detected signs of the North conducting an underwater ejection test of a submarine-launched missile in waters near Sinpo, South Hamgyong Province. A ballistic missile is launched from a submarine near Sinpo, South Hamgyong Province on May 10, 2015, in this picture published by North Koreas official Rodong Sinmun daily. A ballistic missile is launched from a submarine near Sinpo, South Hamgyong Province on May 10, 2015, in this picture published by North Korea's official Rodong Sinmun daily. An earlier underwater ejection test in May was a success. "We can't say with certainty whether the test was successful or not, but it seems to have failed because there was no identification of missile in flight," a source said Sunday. "It's highly likely that the launch was a misfire because fragments of the safety cover were spotted in the water," another source said. The safety cover is removed right after a missile is ejected out of the water by steam pressure, and the missile engine is ignited before it is launched. [SLBM]
• Seoul blasts NK over missile test
  North Korea successfully launches a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) in May. / Yonhap South Korea criticized North Korea on Monday over the military state's failed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) test on Saturday, saying it violated United Nations resolutions. Kim Min-seok, the South's Ministry of Defense spokesman, said the North was prohibited from developing or testing any kind of ballistic missile under U.N. resolutions. "It practically constitutes a U.N. resolution violation," Yonhap news agency quoted him as saying. Kim did not reveal details of Saturday's failed KN-11 missile test -- the missile did not leave the water -- saying the details were confidential. [SLBM] [Chutzpah] [Double standards] [UNUS]

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NOVEMBER 2015

• N. Korea apparently fails to launch ballistic missile from sub: official
  North Korea apparently failed to launch a ballistic missile from a submarine, a South Korean official said Saturday, in a sign that Pyongyang has yet to master the technology. North Korea is believed to have fired a KN-11 missile from a submarine in the East Sea roughly between 2:20 p.m. and 2:40 p.m., but the submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) failed to soar from the waters, the official said "The North appears to have failed in its launch," the official said, citing debris from the missile found on the ocean surface. The official asked not to be identified, citing the issue's sensitivity. It is the first time that North Korea has fired an SLBM since May when it claimed its leader Kim Jong-un oversaw a successful underwater test-launch of a "strategic submarine ballistic missile." [SLBM]
• Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons
  Exclusive: Secret apartheid-era papers give first official evidence of Israeli nuclear weapons The secret military agreement signed by Shimon Peres, now president of Israel, and P W Botha of South Africa. Photograph: Guardian Chris McGreal in Washington
  Monday 24 May 2010 10.13 BST Last modified on Monday 19 May 2014 23.21 BST
  Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state's possession of nuclear weapons. The "top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa's defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel's defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them "in three sizes". The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret. The documents, uncovered by an American academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, in research for a book on the close relationship between the two countries, provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of "ambiguity" in neither confirming nor denying their existence. The Israeli authorities tried to stop South Africa's post-apartheid government declassifying the documents at Polakow-Suransky's request and the revelations will be an embarrassment, particularly as this week's nuclear non-proliferation talks in New York focus on the Middle East. They will also undermine Israel's attempts to suggest that, if it has nuclear weapons, it is a "responsible" power that would not misuse them, whereas countries such as Iran cannot be trusted. [Israel] [Nuclear weapons] [Proliferation]
• Nuclear War and Daily Life
  Most of the time, nuclear weapons and nuclear war are out-of-sight, out-of-mind. For one day, millions of Americans were reminded that they live in the edge of nuclear chaos. A Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile fired on November 7 from offshore Los Angeles set ordinary folks abuzz all the way to Nevada. The San Francisco time-lapse video of the exhaust plume looking south from the North side of Golden Gate was particularly haunting. This is what the end of the world will look like, from one angle—except there will be hundreds of missiles flying—450 from the Mid-West alone in all-out nuclear war.
  If social media is any indication, it appears that many Americans will see the start of a nuclear war announced by missile liftoff as the invasion of aliens. Many others apparently will welcome the resulting apocalypse as the start of the long-overdue end-times from the Book of Revelations. [Nuclear weapons] [Bizarre]
• The Future Impact of North Korea’s Emerging Nuclear Deterrent on Nuclear Nonproliferation
  By 38 North 05 November 2015 The Future Impact of North Korea's Emerging Nuclear Deterrent on Nuclear Nonproliferation The emergence of North Korea’s nuclear deterrent has been a grievous blow to international nonproliferation efforts and poses serious national security challenges for the United States and its Northeast Asian allies. It is by no means clear, however, that the precedent North Korea has set will significantly erode the nonproliferation regime or stimulate proliferation elsewhere. This paper will identify a number of arenas where North Korea’s becoming a nuclear weapons possessor state might be expected to have significant negative consequences, and it will assess the damage likely to be done. As will be seen, the ripple effects of North Korea’s crossing the nuclear threshold may be more limited than they first appear. Download the report, “The Future Impact of North Korea’s Emerging Nuclear Deterrent on Nuclear Nonproliferation” by Leonard S. Spector. Find other papers in the North Korea’s Nuclear Futures Series. *This report was modified on November 6, 2015 to clarify an ambiguity in the article. [Deterrent] [Proliferation]
• World’s Major Powers, in ‘Shameful Behaviour’, Opt out of Nuclear Resolution
  By Rodney Reynolds UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – When the world’s major nuclear powers express their support for nuclear disarmament, their political rhetoric usually fails to match their actions – even as they continue to modernize their arsenals. Undeterred, the UN’s Committee on Disarmament and International Security (also known as the First Committee) traditionally adopts a cluster of over 15-20 resolutions every year – mostly on arms control and nuclear disarmament. This year there was one significant exception: the U.S., Britain and France, three of the world’s major nuclear powers, opted to abstain on a resolution, spearheaded by Japan every year, on united action towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons. All three countries voted in favour of the resolution last year, with U.S. and Britain as co-sponsors. But this year both countries were missing in action – much to the disappointment of Japan, a key Western ally. The speculation at the UN is that the abstentions were triggered largely by the fact that the resolution included the term hibakushas, or survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 years ago, underlying the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. The resolution was adopted on November 2 by a vote of 156 to 3, with 17 abstentions. The three negative votes came from Russia and China, the other two major nuclear powers, plus North Korea.
  Bob Rigg, a former chair of the New Zealand Consultative Committee on Disarmament, who writes on chemical and nuclear weapons-related issues and on U.S. foreign policy, said although Japan was the victim of two devastating U.S. atomic attacks at the end of World War II, subsequent conservative Japanese governments have, ironically enough, tried to benefit strategically from the American nuclear umbrella by playing down this issue. In return for this, he said, Washington has been only too willing to support bland Japanese resolutions paying lip service to nuclear disarmament in very general terms. [Nuclear disarmament]
• First Committee Sends 16 Drafts on Nuclear Disarmament to General Assembly
  2 November 2015 First Committee Sends 16 Drafts on Nuclear Disarmament to General Assembly, Including New One on ‘Ethical Imperatives’, Following 21 Recorded Votes Seventieth Session, 22nd Meeting (PM) General Assembly Meetings Coverage Acknowledging the ethical imperatives for a nuclear-weapon-free world, which was a “global public good of the highest order”, a new draft resolution in the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) approved today asks the General Assembly to declare that those weapons were “inherently immoral” and that all States shared an ethical responsibility to eliminate and prohibit them. That text, “L.40”, was among 16 approved by the Committee in its nuclear weapons cluster, many of which required recorded votes on internal provisions. Further to its terms, the Assembly would declare that the global threat posed by nuclear weapons must urgently be eliminated, and that discussions, decisions and actions on nuclear weapons must focus on the effects of those weapons on human beings and the environment and be guided by the unspeakable suffering and unacceptable harm that they caused. [Nuclear disarmament] [UNUS]
• No Signs of New Test Tunnel Excavation at North Korea’s Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site
  By 38 North 06 November 2015 A 38 North exclsuive with analysis by Jack Liu Recent commercial satellite imagery from September 27 and October 25, 2015 of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site indicate no signs that North Korea is excavating a new tunnel at the existing test areas. The main observable activity is the construction of a new building at the Main Support Area. [Test]

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OCTOBER 2015

• Australia Needs Nukes: Recognizing Canberra's right to nuclear weapons would contribute to Asia-Pacific deterrence
  Australia Nukes Op-Ed October 28, 2015 Christine Leah & Crispin Rovere Over the past century, Australia has been America’s most dependable military ally. In every major U.S. conflict, including World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, Australians have fought alongside. Yet as competition between China and the United States heats up in the Western Pacific, Australia is cautious not to provoke its greatest trading partner. When it comes to a potential U.S.-China conflict, Australia is doing all it can to keep its options open – and with good reason. Australia is highly vulnerable to long-range missile attack, including those carrying nuclear payloads. Despite Australia being a continental power, almost all its population is concentrated in a half-dozen major cities — easy targets for small numbers of warheads. In a high-intensity conflict between the United States and China, it is conceivable that China may target Australia with long-range nuclear missiles as a step up the escalation ladder, demonstrating to the United States its capacity, and willingness, to conduct nuclear strikes over intercontinental ranges. In this eventuality, extended nuclear deterrence would hardly be credible. Retaliating on Australia’s behalf would demonstrably mean accepting large-scale nuclear attack by China on the continental United States. For this reason, many Australians believe entering into conflict with the world’s most populous nuclear power, for any reason and under any circumstance, is unthinkable – despite very strong support for the Australia-U.S. alliance overall. The most effective means for Australia to insulate itself from long-range nuclear attack is to develop or acquire its own reliable long-range nuclear deterrent. [Australia] [Allegiance] [Nuclear weapons] [Apologetics]
• Daesh Hype about Stealing Nuclear Weapons
  By David Albright and Sarah Burkhard October 2, 2015 With Daesh1 entrenched in Syria and Iraq and growing in influence in North Africa and Pakistan, the risk is likely to grow that the terrorist group or one of its allies will seek nuclear weapons. Or at least this is what they want the world to think since their publications imply these intentions. But Daesh’s public claims of ways to accomplish that goal are unfounded and mainly seem intended to simply incite fear. At ISIS, we assess that the risk of Daesh acquiring nuclear weapons is low. However, that characterization needs to be carefully considered. The chance of Daesh acquiring a nuclear weapon, either through theft of a functioning nuclear weapon, or of nuclear explosive material followed by the manufacturing of a crude nuclear explosive, is assessed as low, similar to the risk of a major nuclear reactor accident, such as the Chernobyl and Fukishima disasters. However, although the chance of Daesh stealing a nuclear weapon is low, the consequences would be horrible and extraordinary efforts need to be waged to ensure that the risk becomes even lower. A nuclear explosive going off in a major city would have catastrophic consequences, probably far worse than those of Chernobyl or Fukishima. While the threat of Daesh stealing or otherwise acquiring a nuclear weapon needs to be taken seriously, Daesh writings on the subject should be discounted. [ISIS] [Nuclear terrorism]
• Dirty bomb: Just how worried should we be as ISIS seeks ultimate threat?
  By Matthew Moran and Christopher Hobbs Updated 1544 GMT (2244 HKT) June 16, 2015 Rescue workers take part in a trial in 2008 in Tokyo, Japan, to improve the city's response to a "dirty bomb" attack. Story highlights Radioactive sources acquired by ISIS cannot be used to create a nuclear bomb The real threat from dirty bombs lies in their psychological and economic effects Economic costs associated with a dirty bomb would be considerable Editor's Note: Matthew Moran is deputy director, and Christopher Hobbs is co-director of the the Centre for Science and Security Studies at King's College London, specializing on issues related to nuclear proliferation and security. The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writers. (CNN)—Last week, the news emerged that ISIS terrorists have reportedly obtained radioactive materials from hospitals and research facilities captured in Iraq with a view to developing a radioactive "dirty bomb." Unsurprisingly, the prospect of ISIS dabbling with unconventional weapons has been greeted with considerable concern. The Iraqi government has appealed to the United Nations for international help to "stave off the threat" in this regard and Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop recently acknowledged that NATO countries are deeply concerned by the situation. But what can ISIS actually do with these newly acquired radioactive materials? What is the nature of the threat? First off, it is important to emphasize that radioactive sources of the type acquired by ISIS cannot be used to create a nuclear bomb. These sources are mostly used for medical research and treatments such as radiotherapy, and are completely unsuited to the development of nuclear weapons. This said, the harmful effects of these sources, stemming from their chemical toxicity and radioactive properties, can be exploited in other ways. If inhaled or ingested, for example, these materials can be lethal. This was evidenced by the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, when just a fraction of a gram of radioactive polonium proved enough to kill the former KGB officer. Fortunately, achieving this type of internal exposure on a large scale would prove enormously challenging for a terrorist group. Consequently, attention has focused on the use of these materials by ISIS in a dirty bomb. [ISIS] [Nuclear terrorism]
• Why Corbyn is right on Britain's nuclear 'deterrent'
  Michael Walker 22 October 2015 Trident is far more a political than a military entity – it does not even command uniform support across the military. The change in leadership of the Labour Party has brought the issue of Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons system back into the spotlight. Depressingly, however, the election of a man who is anti-Trident has merely thrown into relief the general consensus within the country’s largest parties for its retention. As this essay will show, these advocates of a British nuclear ‘deterrent’ cynically use the issue for the furtherance of domestic political objectives, rather than to meet genuine defensive needs. The United Kingdom has four submarines equipped to fire Trident nuclear missiles, which are purchased from the United States of America. Almost incredibly, one of these submarines is always at sea, ostensibly deterring nuclear attack from nebulous and changing enemies of Britain. This is known as ‘Continuous At-Sea Deterrence’. The cost of Trident is very high, accounting for 6% of the annual defence budget, according to the Ministry of Defence. [Trident] [Deterrence]
• Obama Adviser Raises Concerns about Japan’s Plutonium Stockpile
  October 13, 2015 The Asahi Shimbun An adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama expressed concerns about Japan’s plan to reprocess its spent nuclear fuel, citing the ever-increasing plutonium stockpile already in the nation’s possession. “In the case of Japan, where there is already a sizable stockpile of separated plutonium, we would prefer not to see it grow,” John Holdren said in an interview with The Asahi Shimbun in Tokyo. Holdren, who advises Obama on science and technology issues, was in Japan for a meeting of the Joint High-Level Committee on U.S.-Japan Science and Technology Cooperation. [Plutonium] [Japanese remilitarisation] [Nuclearisation]
• Nuclear North Korea: How Will it Behave?
  By 38 North 21 October 2015 Nuclear North Korea: How Will It Behave?Much of the academic literature and policy thinking about proliferation makes the simple distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear states. This distinction is enshrined in the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). But it is clear that while there is a nuclear threshold, not all states that have crossed it are equal, and it is hardly counterintuitive to suggest that the quantity and quality of states’ arsenals are likely to affect their behavior or the behavior of others toward them. The DPRK’s nuclear arsenal will almost certainly grow over the next five years, and delivery capabilities are likely to improve. What concerns most observers is the possibility of increasingly reckless North Korean behavior—i.e., dangerous action as opposed to simply heightened rhetoric. This paper seeks to examine how North Korea’s behavior would be impacted by their growing nuclear arsenal. [Nuclear strategy] [NK US policy] [Provocation] [Unique]
• Did N.Korea Copy Russian Ballistic Missile?
  An intercontinental ballistic missile unveiled during a parade marking the 70th anniversary of the North Korean Workers Party on Oct. 10 looks suspiciously similar to Russia's SS-N-23 submarine-launched missile, a government source here said Sunday. The source said the new missile has an estimated range of about 9,000 km with a larger warhead than a similar earlier rocket with the range of 12,000 km. A video clip from [North] Korean Central TV shows the difference between a new intercontinental ballistic missile recently unveiled during the 70th anniversary of the Workers Party and earlier one with a sharper warhead (insert). A video clip from [North] Korean Central TV shows the difference between a new intercontinental ballistic missile recently unveiled during the 70th anniversary of the Workers Party and earlier one with a sharper warhead (insert). Military authorities here note that the North previously turned an old Soviet submarine-launched missile into the Musudan ground-launched ballistic missile with a range of 3,500 km and deployed it warfare-ready. The North also showed off an improved Musudan missile at this year’s parade, which was modified from an old Soviet SS-N-6 missile. It is about 3 m longer than the Soviet version. Soviet missile engineers are believed to have played a decisive role in building North Korean missile, traveling clandestinely to the North from the late 1980s, when the Soviet Union was collapsing, until the early 1990s. [Missile] [ICBM]
• Formosat-5 slated for February 2016 launch
  Publication Date: October 16, 2015 Source: Taiwan Today Formosat-5 slated for February 2016 launch A technician works on Taiwan’s first locally made space-grade optical remote sensing instrument before its installation on the Formosat-5 satellite. (Courtesy of NSPO) Taiwan’s Formosat-5, an ultra-high-resolution Earth observation satellite operated by the Hsinchu City-headquartered National Space Organization, is scheduled for launch in February 2016, according to the NSPO. With over 70 percent of the satellite having been developed domestically, Formosat-5 contains a locally made optical remote sensing payload, a Cassegrain telescope-type remote sensing instrument and the world’s first complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor linear image sensor. NSPO Director-General Chang Guey-shin said Oct. 15 that the satellite has passed space environment and function tests and is set to take over duties from Formosat-2, which has been in orbit since 2004. [Satellite] [Taiwan]
• Park seeks US support in space program
  President Park Geun-hye listens to an official from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during her visit to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., Thursday (KST). / Yonhap Visit to NASA seen as catalyst for sharing resources By Kang Seung-woo WASHINGTON — President Park Geun-hye visited the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., Thursday. Her visit to the U.S. agency's first space research laboratory came 50 years after her father and former President Park Chung-hee, who was keen on advancing science and space technologies, toured NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida in 1965. She vowed to step up efforts to advance cooperation with the United States in the sector. "Despite Korea's short history in the space sector, it became the 11th member of the Space Club after successfully launching the Naro rocket in 2013. In addition, we are seeking to launch a lunar orbiter and a moon probe by 2020," Park said. [Satellite] [US dominance]
• North Korea: Development of Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile Continues
  By Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. 14 October 2015 Commercial satellite imagery indicates that North Korea is continuing the development of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) at the Sinpo South Shipyard, including planning for a test of the vertical launch tube intended to fire the weapon. These developments may account for a CNN report on October 9—the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK)—that US officials believed the DPRK might conduct an SLBM test soon. [SLBM]
• North Korea: Update on Activity at Sohae Satellite Launching Station
  By 38 North 09 October 2015 A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Jack Liu and Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. Recent commercial satellite imagery of Sohae Satellite Launching Station (“Tongchang-ri”) confirms 38 North’s previous assessment that a long-range rocket launch is unlikely on or before the 70th anniversary of the Worker’s Party of Korea (WPK) on October 10. Moreover, ongoing construction activities—including the discovery of a new fuel and oxidizer storage site nearing completion adjacent to the gantry tower—and the absence of any visible preparations for a launch indicate it is increasingly unlikely that a test will be conducted this month. [Satellite]
• N.Korea Shelves Rocket Launch Plan
  Recent rhetoric from North Korea suggests that the reclusive state is bowing to international pressure and shelving plans for a rocket launch for the time being. A blustering article in the weekly Tongil Sinbo on Tuesday claimed the North has "the technology to launch a satellite even in an adverse condition like snowy winter," suggesting that the launch will not go ahead to coincide with the Workers Party anniversary on Oct. 10. But it added a formulaic expression much used in recent weeks, "As we have already declared, we will launch satellites one after another at a time." The delay could be due to international pressure, especially China, or technical problems. [Satellite]
• Russia Successfully Test Fires Topol Ballistic Missile
  19:41 22.08.2015(updated 19:57 22.08.2015) Russia's Strategic Missile Forces on Saturday launched a Topol intercontinental ballistic missile to test its advanced components and technical characteristics, the forces’ press service said. Powerful Topol-M: 30 Years in the Inventory of the Russian Army © AFP 2015/ ALEXANDER NEMENOV Powerful Topol-M: 30 Years in the Inventory of the Russian Army 12 MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The RS-12M Topol (NATO reporting name SS-25 Sickle) is a single-warhead intercontinental ballistic missile that has a maximum range of 10,000 kilometers (6,125 miles) and can carry a nuclear warhead with a yield of up to 550 kilotons. The launch of the RS-12M Topol missile was carried out from the Kapustin Yar testing range in southern Russia’s Astrakhan Region, according to the statement. "The simulated warhead hit a designated target at the Sary-Shagan test range [in Kazakhstan] with pre-programmed precision," the press service said. [ICBM] [Test]
• China Tests Its Most Dangerous Nuclear Weapon of All Time
  Zachary Keck August 19, 2015 China conducted a flight test of its new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) this month. This week, Bill Gertz reported that earlier this month, China conducted the fourth flight test of its DF-41 road-mobile ICBM. “The DF-41, with a range of between 6,835 miles and 7,456 miles, is viewed by the Pentagon as Beijing’s most potent nuclear missile and one of several new long-range missiles in development or being deployed,” Gertz reports. He goes on to note that this is the fourth time in the past three years that China has tested the DF-41, indicating that the missile is nearing deployment. Notably, according to Gertz, in the latest test China shot two independently targetable warheads from the DF-41, further confirming that the DF-41 will hold multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV). [ICBM] [Test]
• Minot conducts ICBM test launch on 45 year Minuteman III anniversary
  Posted 8/19/2015 Updated 8/20/2015 by Capt. Christopher Mesnard Air Force Global Strike Command Public Affairs 8/19/2015 - BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. -- It was 45 years to the day that the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, put the U.S. Air Force's first Minuteman III missiles on alert. Today, the 91st MW completed an operational test launch of an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile at Vandenberg AFB, California, continuing its mission providing strategic deterrence for the United States and our allies. Working with members of the 576th Flight Test Squadron and 30th Space Wing at Vandenberg AFB, the Minot team launched the ICBM today at 3:03 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. The test reentry vehicle impacted in a pre-established test area roughly 4,200 miles away in the Pacific Ocean near the Kwajalein Atoll. [ICBM] [Test]
• N. Korea estimated to hold 22 nuclear weapons worth of fissile material: ISIS
  WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 (Yonhap) -- North Korea is estimated to be holding up to 22 nuclear weapons worth of fissile material, a U.S. research institute said Wednesday. The Institute for Science and International Security made the estimate in a report, saying that as of last year the communist nation was believed to be holding up to 34 kilograms of plutonium and 240 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium if Pyongyang has two uranium enrichment plants. But the estimate could further increase because Pyongyang could extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel used in the 5-megawatt nuclear reactor that it restarted in 2013, the institute said. [Nuclear weapons]
• S.Korea to Deploy Longer-Range Missiles by 2017
  South Korea will deploy a new ballistic missile with a range of 800 km warfare-ready by 2017. A government source said the Agency for Defense Development has targeted 2017 as the year for extending South Korea's ballistic missile range to 800 km. If launched from Jeju Island, a missile with a range of 800 km could reach Sinuiju on the North Korea-China border, and if fired from an area south of Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province it could hit anywhere along the Duman River. South Korea was restricted from having missiles with a range longer than 300 km under an agreement with the U.S., but that was extended to 800 km in 2012. Last year Seoul succeeded in developing a ballistic missile with a range of 500 km and in early June this year tested another 500-km missile. South Korea aims for a so-called "kill chain," whereby the military can detect signs of an impending missile launch by North Korea and preemptively destroy it. It also includes purchasing Global Hawk long-range, high-altitude unmanned reconnaissance aircraft in 2018 and 2019. [Missiles]
• Despite predictions, still no detectable moves toward North Korea rocket launch
  Posted on : Oct.1,2015 10:48 KST Rocket launch requires 7-10 days of preparation, meaning launch around Oct. 10 would need to start soon
  Reports on North Korea’s lack of immediate preparations for a rocket launch are raising questions about its aims in repeatedly announcing plans for one during the Chuseok holiday. If North Korea is planning a launch for the seventieth anniversary of the foundation of its Workers’ Party on Oct. 10, as some have predicted, then it would need to begin preparations shortly. The total procedure of transporting the rocket, installing a launch pad, and fueling for a launch typically takes a week to ten days. Yet sources have reported no activity to date that could be interpreted as launch preparations. A military officer said the “combined assets of South Korea and the US are closely monitoring North Korea’s activities.” “To date, I am not aware of any detection of train activity to transport a rocket from the munitions factory in Pyongyang’s Sanum neighborhood to the launch site at Tongchang Village,” the authority said. [Satellite]
• 800km-range missiles to be deployed by 2017
  By Jun Ji-hye The military intends to complete the development of ballistic missiles with a range of 800 kilometers and deploy them by 2017, officials said Thursday. This is in response to North Korea's nuclear and missile capacities, officials said, noting that the 800 kilometer-range missiles will put the whole of the North within striking distance. "The missile development plan was included in the Agency for Defense Development's (ADD) five-year roadmap initiated by the Park Geun-hye government," a government official told reporters, asking not to be named. When Park was sworn in early 2013, the military only possessed ballistic missiles that have a range of 300 kilometers. This was the first time that the time frame for the extension of ballistic missiles' range was disclosed. [Missiles]
• N. Korea continues threats, but no concrete moves detected
  Posted on : Sep.30,2015 11:49 KST North Korean deputy foreign minister Pak Myong-guk listens as President Park Geun-hye addresses the UN General Assembly in New York, Sep. 28. (Newsis) A long-range rocket launch would scuttle inter-Korean reconciliation, and lead to new round of UN sanctions North Korea made more threats about launching rockets and testing nuclear weapons during the Chuseok holiday, though there were no indications that it is making actual preparations for either of these actions. South Korean President Park Geun-hye, US President Barack Obama, and Chinese President Xi Jinping publically urged North Korea to refrain from doing anything that would raise tensions. “When we launch satellites and strengthen our nuclear deterrent, it is the legitimate exercise of the autonomy of a sovereign state that no one may challenge or violate,” North Korea said in the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the Korean Workers’ Party, on Sep. 28. [Satellite]
• Top diplomats of 3 allies warn against NK rocket launch
  By Yi Whan-woo The top diplomats of South Korea, the United States and Japan warned North Korea not to launch a long-range rocket in their joint talks in New York, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Wednesday. Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made it clear that such a provocation by Pyongyang would lead to "further significant measures" taken by the international community. The three-way foreign ministerial meeting took place Tuesday on the sidelines of the 70th U.N. General Assembly, in which President Park Geun-hye addressed concerns over North Korea's possible launching of a long-range rocket. The President returned home Wednesday. Since Sept. 14, the military regime has repeatedly hinted at launching a satellite to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of its Workers' Party on Oct. 10. The secretive state has claimed such a launch would be for peaceful space development. But the U.S., South Korea and Japan suspect it is merely cover for a ballistic missile test. [Satellite]
• North Korea prepared to launch missiles 'at any time', says ambassador
  In rare public appearance, Hyon Hak-bon says threat of sanctions will not interfere with plans ahead of significant 70th anniversary Emma Graham-Harrison Thursday 1 October 2015 05.00 BST North Korea will not be deterred from plans to launch controversial long-range missiles by the threat of further sanctions, the country’s ambassador to the UK said in a rare public appearance. Pyongyang insists the launches are part of a peaceful satellite programme but the US and its allies say they are disguised ballistic missile tests and a key component of a nuclear weapons development scheme. [Satellite] [Media] [Heading]
• A DPRK Perspective on the Situation in the Korean Peninsula
  30 Sep 2015 - 13:00 to 14:00Chatham House, Participants HE Hyon Hak-bong, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United Kingdom, Embassy of the Democratic People’s Republic of KoreaChair: Dr John Nilsson-Wright, Head of Asia Programme, Chatham House - See more at: https://www.chathamhouse.org/event/dprk-perspective-situation-korean-peninsula#sthash.F2dxLqGn.dpuf The Korean Peninsula has long been a critical flash-point for potential conflict in Northeast Asia. Since December 2011, with the emergence of Kim Jong-un as the new leader in Pyongyang, and the election in 2012 of the Park Geun-hye administration in Seoul, relations between the two Koreas have fluctuated between moments of positive engagement and constructive dialogue on the one hand and increased tension and fear of military escalation on the other. At all times, the issues of denuclearization and the potential for unification have loomed large.Against this backdrop, Ambassador Hyon will provide a Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) perspective on the current situation on the Korean Peninsula, considering the nuclear issue, the role of the US and the prospects for regional security. - See more at: https://www.chathamhouse.org/event/dprk-perspective-situation-korean-peninsula#sthash.9IAvrUvb.dpuf [NK US policy] [Satellite]

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SEPTEMBER 2015

• The New Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation Agreement Between South Korea and the United States: From Dependence to Parity
  KEI is proud to release the latest volume in its Special Studies Series, The New Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation Agreement Between South Korea and the United States: From Dependence to Parity by Dr. Fred McGoldrick, an analysis of the new U.S.-Korea 123 nuclear cooperation agreement. Replacing the existing 1974 U.S.-Korean bilateral agreement on nuclear cooperation, the new agreement took years of negotiation to balance the interests and requirements of the two countries in promoting the development of nuclear energy. The U.S. and Korean negotiators' success was largely due to the mutual trust and respect that has developed between the United States and the Republic of Korea over the years. As Dr. McGoldrick points out in his analysis of the agreement, the new agreement establishes an unprecedented level of cooperation between two governments in the field of civil nuclear energy and achieves the following goals: The new agreement replaces a one-sided and outmoded pact with one that reflects the mature and advanced nuclear status and capabilities of South Korea as a nuclear power. The agreement contains a range of reciprocal nonproliferation obligations for both parties that reflect the modern international nuclear export control regime. The agreement sets a pathway for possible U.S. long-term consent for the South Koreans conducting pyroprocessing or enrichment of nuclear material subject to the agreement. [US ROK] [Fuel cycle] [Spin]
• The Search for Interim Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage in South Korea
  By Jungmin Kang 31 August 2015 I. Introduction Plans call for a continued expansion in South Korea’s fleet of nuclear reactors, but at the same time, facilities for the temporary storage of spent fuel, mostly in at-reactor pools, continue to fill up. Negotiations between the nuclear industry and central government agencies on one side, and local host communities on the other, for siting of interim spent fuel storage facilities, let alone permanent waste disposal facilities, have been largely ineffective to date, due in large part to a combination of the tactics used by authorities in approaching local communities, and a lack of unbiased information about nuclear facilities on the part of local stakeholders. In the last few years, a new effort to engage host communities has been undertaken, and shows some promise, though much work remains before agreements on facility siting can be reached. [Nuclear waste]
• N.Korea Tidying Up Rocket Launch Site
  A screen grab shows a rocket being launched from a launch pad in Cholsan, North Pyongan Province in this picture released by the official [North] Korean Central News Agency on Dec. 12, 2012 (file photo). A screen grab shows a rocket being launched from a launch pad in Cholsan, North Pyongan Province in this picture released by the official [North] Korean Central News Agency on Dec. 12, 2012 (file photo). North Korea has fenced off and tidied up a rocket launch site as the Workers Party's 70th anniversary on Oct. 10 approaches, a government source here said Wednesday. But there are no signs of an imminent launch at the remote site in Tongchang-ri, North Pyongan Province. "There's lively activity at the Tongchang-ri missile launch site," the source here said. "We've found out that there's more movement of people and equipment there and they're putting the launch site into order." But no rocket parts have been taken to the site yet, the source added. Seoul still worries that the North will launch a rocket to coincide with the party anniversary, testing technology that could then be used to build an intercontinental ballistic missile. If converted into an ICBM, a rocket with a range of about 10,000 km could hit the western U.S. mainland. [Satellite]
• Park urges NK to abandon nuclear weapons
  President Park Geun-hye delivers a speech at the U.N. headquarters in New York, the U.S., Saturday. / Yonhap By Kim Bo-eun South Korean President Park Geun-hye urged North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and open its reclusive regime in a keynote speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Monday. In the 15-minute speech, Park said that for Pyongyang to give up its nuclear capability is of utmost importance in maintaining the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty and achieve a nuke free world. Citing Iran and its agreement to give up its nuclear weapons in July, President Park said that the world needs to concentrate its efforts helping North Korea denuclearize itself.
• Hiroshima and Nagasaki: There Were Other Choices
  by Peter Hayes 28 September 2015 I. Introduction There is no single compelling factor to justify the bombings as inevitable, argues Peter Hayes. Rather, a series of decisions and events cumulatively drove the bomb forward from development to deployment at Hiroshima. The later nuclear attack on Nagasaki, moreover, was gratuitous. This report was initially published in the Fall 2015 issue of Global Asia. Peter Hayes is Professor at the Centre for International Security Studies, Sydney University, Director of the Nautilus Institute and a Global Asia editorial board member. II. Report by Peter Hayes Hiroshima and Nagasaki: There Were Other Choices The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain within living memory. The mayors of these two cities, the first to be annihilated by nuclear weapons, have invited the Group of 7 leaders to meet with Japanese hibakusha (bomb survivors) after their May 2016 summit in Ise-Shima. If they go — as they should — the question of whether the bombings were necessary should be uppermost in their mind. “Yes” would mean that nuclear deterrence, and its spawn, nuclear extended deterrence, have historical underpinnings justified in universal morality and international law, starting with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “No” would commit them to abolishing nuclear weapons, however long it takes, as the necessary redemption for needlessly sacrificing these two cities. Today, this choice is starkly binary, albeit complex. In 1945, the decision to use the bomb was not obvious or even well understood by many of the key players. The simplest of the competing narratives that dominate reflections on the bombings is that these attacks were inhumane in a new and unimaginable way, and simply should never have taken place.1 This is the perspective of the Japanese survivors (although not of the Korean survivors who were working in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the time, many of whom wished the United States had dropped more nuclear bombs on Japan). That the bombings were a new type of war crime was the view of the Japanese government, which protested to the US State Department to this effect via the Swiss Legation on Aug. 11, 1945. The dominant narrative in favor of the attacks admits that the collateral civilian losses were tragic, but holds that the attacks were also justified by abruptly ending the war and saving countless American military and Japanese civilian lives. This line of argument has been challenged by examination of the historical record of US decision-making leading up to the bombings — for example, the influence of post-war geopolitical concerns on the advice tendered to President Harry Truman before the bombings. Careful study has also shown that other factors than the nuclear bombings, in particular the shock of the Soviet entry into the war, may have led to Japan’s actual surrender whatever Truman did.2 The third interpretation of the attacks is the apocalyptic account that seized the imaginations and political agendas of many political and intellectual leaders during the Cold War, but was prefigured even before the first nuclear bombings. [Nuclear weapons] [Hiroshima] [1945]
• Satellites, Warheads and Rockets: Is North Korea’s Space Program Really about Missile Development?
  By John Schilling 28 September 2015 When the Soviet Union shocked the world and opened the Space Age on October 4, 1957, it was not a coincidence that its first satellite was launched into orbit on a modified R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). For many observers, that was the message of Sputnik—the rocket that did this, can deliver hydrogen bombs to your cities. Nor was the message sent only once. The first 96 Soviet satellite launches were conducted using modified ICBMs, before Russian engineers bothered to design a rocket specifically for space missions. China still hasn’t bothered to field a space launch vehicle (SLV) that isn’t also a ballistic missile. On the other side of the world, every ICBM design the United States has ever put into service has been adapted to launch satellites at some time or another. So when North Korea launched its first satellite on December 12, 2012, many observers thought the message was clear: the rocket that did this, can deliver atomic bombs to your cities. And indeed it can. But is this really the purpose of the Unha-3? Is it an ICBM masquerading as an SLV, or an SLV that might someday be repurposed as a missile? There is precedent for both. Or, as Pyongyang claims, is the Unha-3 intended purely for peaceful space exploration? There are sound technical reasons for using the same rocket in both applications. The fundamental requirement for an ICBM is to accelerate a hydrogen bomb sized payload to roughly 16,000 miles per hour, just above the atmosphere and aimed about 20 degrees above the horizon. To launch a satellite, you want to be a little bit higher, flying horizontally at 18,000 miles per hour. Until your satellites grow larger than your bombs, there is no reason to develop a second rocket, and no way for suspicious outsiders to know for sure what your real goals are. [Satellite]
• Special Unit to Strike N.Korea's Nuke, Missile Sites
  South Korea is preparing to establish a special unit to strike key strategic targets in North Korea, a military officer said in a parliamentary audit on Wednesday. Lt. Gen. Chang Kyung-suk of the Special Warfare Command told lawmakers that "strategic targets" include nuclear weapons and long-range missile sites. There are six brigades under the Special Warfare Command, and it is preparing to turn one of them into a special unit that can carry out independent operations to strike key strategic targets. "We have North Korean regions in mind as targets of our operations," Chang added [Special forces] [Satellite]
• CNN shows first media look at North Korea’s rocket launch facilities
  Posted on : Sep.24,2015 14:17 KST A satellite image from Sep. 7, taken by the North Korean affairs website 38 North at Punggye Village nuclear test site shows no sign of preparation for a nuclear test. (Yonhap News) Rare access for US media could be a sign that N. Korea is looking to draw attention amid questions of possible rocket launch Western media got their first look at North Korea’s new long-range rocket launch command facilities. CNN announced on Sept. 22 that North Korea had allowed the first foreign media coverage of its satellite control center. A brief interview with scientists outside the structure was also aired. The control center is affiliated with the National Aerospace Development Administration (NADA), which supervises North Korea’s space development projects. According to a Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) report, the center received a “field guidance” visit from leader Kim Jong-un on Sept. 5. North Korea’s decision to invite CNN to the center is being seen as a move to attract US attention amid widespread interest in whether it plans to carry out a long-range rocket launch for the seventieth anniversary of its Workers‘ Party foundation on Oct. 10. “There is little visible security for a facility said by some to be at the heart of North Korea’s ballistic missile program,” the report notes over footage of the center’s exterior. On the outside of the building are the words, “Conquering Space with the Spirit of Military First Choson.” The report also noted that 300 researchers - most of them young scientists chosen from the country’s top university on Kim‘s orders - were working night and day on research at the center. “We young scientists are working full-steam, day and night with no rest, especially these days,” said one control center scientist in an interview. But the scientists at the center also claimed the aim of a rocket launch would be for peaceful research. “Why on Earth would we have any intention to drop nuclear missiles on the heads of people throughout the world, including of course the people of the United States?” asked one. Center officials declined CNN’s request to be shown the inside of the facility. By Park Hyun, staff reporter [Satellite]
• Ground control: North Korea's latest space center
  Updated 0819 GMT (1519 HKT) September 23, 2015 Two officials walk across the facility. Kim Gun Song (not pictured), who is in charge of the satellite control center, said they "believe the threat to world security does not come from the peaceful launches of satellites from North Korea, but...from other countries who are trying to use outer space for military purposes." 11 photos: Ground control: North Korea's latest space center Two officials walk across the facility. Kim Gun Song (not pictured), who is in charge of the satellite control center, said they "believe the threat to world security does not come from the peaceful launches of satellites from North Korea, but...from other countries who are trying to use outer space for military purposes." North Korea's brand new satellite control center has never been visited by foreign media before -- but CNN's team visiting Pyongyang was given a tour of its exterior and interviewed some of the center's top officials and researchers. Some say the center is the heart of North Korea's ballistic missile program, but the officials say its means are peaceful. [Satellite] [Photos]
• Privatizing the apocalypse: How nuclear weapons companies commandeer your tax dollars
  22 September, by Jonathan Alan King and Richard Krushnic Imagine for a moment a genuine absurdity: somewhere in the United States, the highly profitable operations of a set of corporations were based on the possibility that sooner or later your neighborhood would be destroyed and you and all your neighbors annihilated. And not just you and your neighbors, but others and their neighbors across the planet. What would we think of such companies, of such a project, of the mega-profits made off it? In fact, such companies do exist. They service the American nuclear weapons industry and the Pentagon’s vast arsenal of potentially world-destroying weaponry. They make massive profits doing so, live comfortable lives in our neighborhoods, and play an active role in Washington politics. Most Americans know little or nothing about their activities and the media seldom bother to report on them or their profits, even though the work they do is in the service of an apocalyptic future almost beyond imagining. Add to the strangeness of all that another improbability. Nuclear weapons have been in the headlines for years now and yet all attention in this period has been focused like a spotlight on a country that does not possess a single nuclear weapon and, as far as the American intelligence community can tell, has shown no signs of actually trying to build one. We’re speaking, of course, of Iran. Almost never in the news, on the other hand, are the perfectly real arsenals that could actually wreak havoc on the planet, especially our own vast arsenal and that of our former superpower enemy, Russia. [Nuclear weapons] [Double standards] [Privatisation]
• New Activity at North Korea’s Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site
  By 38 North 24 September 2015 A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Jack Liu and Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates new activity at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site, the location of Pyongyang’s previous three nuclear detonations. While there has been speculation that the North intends to conduct a fourth nuclear test to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) on October 10, the purpose of this activity at this point remains entirely unclear. It could be related to anything from maintenance work to preparations for another nuclear test. [Test]
• North Korea: Long-Range Rocket Launch Unlikely On or Before October 10
  By 38 North 24 September 2015 A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Jack Liu and Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. Recent commercial satellite imagery of North Korea’s Sohae Satellite Launching Station (“Tongchang-ri”) indicates that the fourth launch of a long-range space launch vehicle (SLV), while still possible, is unlikely on or before October 10, the 70th anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK). Despite speculation by the international media, there are no signs at the launch pad or the Sohae facility of preparations to launch an SLV. Moreover, in a September 22 CNN interview (updated on September 23), North Korean space scientists stated that it is “very wrong” to “think that we are about to launch a satellite on a particular festival day, on a particular anniversary or on a major holiday” given the difficult scientific challenges of space exploration. [Satellite]
• North Korea's space race: Satellite launch imminent, official says
  By Will Ripley and Tim Schwarz, CNN Updated 1316 GMT (2016 HKT) September 23, 2015 N. Korea gives CNN rare look at satellite center
  Story highlights CNN spoke to space scientists outside new space facility in Pyongyang Speculation mounting that North Korea will launch a satellite to mark an upcoming holiday But the scientists say they're not aiming to launch satellites on any particular date Pyongyang (CNN)—It looks like the Starship Enterprise from the outside, a futuristic complex surrounded by landscaped gardens in a quiet residential area of Pyongyang. This is North Korea's newly opened satellite control center. CNN had been given an exclusive interview with the senior officials who run it, though the front door is as close as we're permitted to get. Just weeks before a major national holiday widely thought to be a target date for the reclusive nation's first rocket and satellite blast-off in nearly three years, two senior directors of the National Aeronautical Development Association (NADA) tell us a launch is "imminent" and final preparations are underway to send rockets and "multiple satellites" into space. They insist their purpose is peaceful space exploration. The scientists also express "outrage" at ongoing speculation they are secretly operating a ballistic missile development program. [Satellite]
• U.S. Will Station New Nuclear Weapons in Germany Against Russia
  Sep 22, 2015 Eric Zuesse Germany’s ZDF public television network headlines on Tuesday September 22nd, “New U.S. Atomic Weapons to Be Stationed in Germany,” and reports that the U.S. will bring into Germany 20 new nuclear bombs, each being four times the destructive power of the one that was used on Hiroshima. Hans Kristensen, the Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, says, “With the new bombs the boundaries blur between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.” A former Parliamentary State Secretary in Germany’s Defense Ministry, Willy Wimmer, of Chancellor Merkel’s own conservative party, the Christian Democratic Union, warns that these “new attack options against Russia” constitute “a conscious provocation of our Russian neighbors.” German Economic News also reports on Chancellor Merkel’s decision to allow these terror-weapons against Russia: “The Bundestag decided in 2009, expressing the will of most Germans, that the US should withdraw its nuclear weapons from Germany. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel did nothing.” And now she okays the U.S. to increase America’s German-based nuclear arsenal against Russia. [Russia confrontation]
• [Column] More sanctions only a boon for domestic N. Korean propaganda
  Posted on : Sep.21,2015 10:59 KST If N. Korea does launch a rocket, sanctions in response will likely raise the possibility of a fourth nuclear test After hinting on Sep. 14 that it might launch a long-range rocket with the payload of a satellite, North Korea brought up the possibility on Sep. 15 that it could even carry out a fourth nuclear test. This increases the likelihood that one false step will push the Korean Peninsula once more into a period of confrontation and conflict. I think this is a time that demands a wise response from the government of South Korean President Park Geun-hye. That wise response involves dealing with the threat of a rocket launch separately from the threat of a nuclear test. To summarize, while South Korea will no doubt bring all of its dialogue options and diplomatic resources to bear on preventing North Korea from launching another long-range rocket, even if the North does launch a rocket, South Korea must not create a situation that would force North Korea into carrying out another nuclear weapons test. Instead, I think that South Korea should concentrate its efforts on restoring a framework for dialogue, including the six-party talks. [Satellite] [SK NK policy] [Reverse_desire] [Sanctions]
• North Korea still describing rocket launch as exercise of sovereignty
  Posted on : Sep.18,2015 10:29 KST On the same day North Korea said that a rocket launch is an exercise of its sovereignty, North Korean women wait outside of a department store in Pyongyang, Sep. 17. (AP/Yonhap News) So far, pronouncements about launch have appeared aimed at foreign more than domestic audiences After indicating several times on Sep. 14 and 15 that it could test a nuclear device or launch a long-range rocket, North Korea once again described this as an exercise of its sovereignty on Sep. 17. On Sep. 17, Uriminzokkiri, the website of North Korea’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland - an organization the North uses to communicate with South Korea – posted an article under the name of the website’s editor that said, “The peaceful development of space is a legal right of sovereign states that is recognized in international law. Strengthening our nuclear deterrent in response to US schemes to crush North Korea is a legitimate form of self-defense that no one can question.” In the post, the website launched a counterattack on the US and South Korea. “The US and South Korea are losing their cool about our announcement of plans to test a nuclear weapon and to launch a satellite. But at this very moment, the US is bringing a large number of various nuclear strike options into South Korea to invade our republic, and the South Korean military is also openly talking about testing a rocket with a range of 800 kilometers,” the post said. [Satellite] [Double standards]
• Energy sector cooperation with the DPRK in support of a regional Nuclear Weapons Free Zone
  by David von Hippel and Peter Hayes 21 September 2015 I. Introduction In this paper, we describe the DPRK energy economy, including a description of recent trends in DPRK energy supply and demand. We then summarize the DPRK’s energy security situation and energy sector needs, along with a brief description of potential regional/international cooperation options for providing energy sector development assistance to DPRK. These options include conventional energy, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. They are followed with more general approaches to engagement and an example “package” of cooperation measures. These non-nuclear options are benchmarked to a quantitative estimate of the net present value of the two light water reactors that were to be provided in the US-DPRK Agreed Framework but never completed, as a reasonable benchmark, followed by a review of the DPRK nuclear energy sector and related potential cooperation options and issues related to the DPRK domestic pilot light water reactor and enrichment programs. We conclude by highlighting key insights and opportunities for increasing the DPRK’s energy security in the context of regional energy development in which all states have a stake. [NWFZ]
• Update on North Korea’s Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site
  By 38 North 18 September 2015 A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Jack Liu Despite renewed speculation of a possible North Korean nuclear test, recent commercial satellite imagery from September 7, 2015 shows no sign of nuclear test preparations at the North’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site and little or no change at the facility since August.
• Complexity and Weapons of Mass Destruction in Northeast Asia
  by Peter Hayes and Roger Cavazos 14 September 2015 Peter Hayes and Roger Cavazos write “This chapter examines the increasingly complex problem of the threat posed by nuclear weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Northeast Asia. The first section sketches the recent evolution of the role played by nuclear weapons in international affairs and provides a summary of the nuclear weapons problem both globally and regionally from a conventional, policy-oriented viewpoint. The second section argues that bottom-up incremental changes due to nuclear weapons proliferation led to tipping points whereby the system of US nuclear hegemony was transformed. In the third section, we note that this phase-shift in the nature of the nuclear weapons problem has led to a renewed and likely increased threat of nuclear next-use in the region. In the fourth section, we examine state-based strategies for solving the nuclear weapons problem, commonly framed as “arms control” or “disarmament” measures.” This chapter examines the increasingly complex problem of the threat posed by nuclear weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Northeast Asia. The first section sketches the recent evolution of the role played by nuclear weapons in international affairs and provides a summary of the nuclear weapons problem both globally and regionally from a conventional, policy-oriented viewpoint. It argues that US nuclear hegemony was constructed to contain the contradictions at the core of its nuclear-based state security strategy. The second section argues that bottom-up incremental changes due to nuclear weapons proliferation led to tipping points whereby the system of US nuclear hegemony was transformed. The threat of nuclear war metamorphosed and metastasized from a Cold War-era “manageable” threat in Northeast Asia to a rapidly changing, turbulent, and uncontrolled “nuclear breakout” by the DPRK and potentially by non-state actors. In the third section, we note that this phase-shift in the nature of the nuclear weapons problem has led to a renewed and likely increased threat of nuclear next-use in the region. In the fourth section, we examine state-based strategies for solving the nuclear weapons problem, commonly framed as “arms control” or “disarmament” measures. We note that because these approaches do not attend to the underlying drivers of the bottom-up proliferation and increased risk of nuclear next-use, nor to the cross-cutting issues that exacerbate these dynamics, these conventional measures may stabilize, but not eliminate the twin nuclear threats associated with declining US nuclear hegemony, namely horizontal proliferation and increasing risk of nuclear war. Rather, as the chapter concludes, only civil society-based cooperative security strategies can supplant nuclear weapons and related insecurity from destabilizing the region. [Nuclear weapons]
• Nuclear Costs to Jump, Pentagon Says
  By Kingston Reif The Defense Department’s plan to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal “is a very expensive proposition” and will “roughly double” the percentage of the budget allocated to nuclear weapons for a period of time during the 2020s and 2030s, according to a senior department official. In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on June 25, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said the cost to build and sustain new nuclear missiles, submarines, and bombers and to make needed improvements to nuclear command and control systems is projected to average $18 billion per year from 2021 to 2035 in constant fiscal year 2016 dollars. When combined with the cost to sustain the current arsenal as the new systems are built, this will increase spending on nuclear weapons from the current level of approximately 3 percent of the overall defense budget to about 7 percent, Work said. [Nuclear weapons] [Double standards] [US global strategy]
• North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Facility: New Activity at the Plutonium Production Complex
  By 38 North 08 September 2015 A 38 North exclusive with analysis by William Mugford and Jack Liu Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates new activity is underway at two areas in the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center—the 5 MWe Reactor and Radiochemical Laboratory complex—that are key to the production of plutonium for building nuclear weapons. Specifically: [Yongbyon]
• N.Korea 'Trying to Make H-Bomb'
  North Korea may be trying to obtain material for a hydrogen bomb by putting reactor at Yongbyon back into operation, a U.S. think tank speculates. In a report on the North's nuclear facility at Yongbyon on Wednesday, David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington said, "As part of the renovation of the reactor, North Korean technicians reportedly installed (or renovated) irradiation channels in the core." "One candidate isotope that must be considered is tritium, which could be used in making more sophisticated nuclear weapons." He speculated that the North may want to conduct another nuclear test to obtain tritium. "Isotope production requires a facility to separate the isotopes. North Korea built such a facility years ago, called the Isotope Production Laboratory in the northern part of Yongbyon near the old Soviet-supplied reactor," Albright said but added, "This facility dates to the 1970s and its operational status is unknown." "Tritium would enable nuclear weapon designs that could have greater explosive yields than weapons made from only plutonium or weapons-grade uranium," he added. "Whether North Korea can make nuclear weapons using tritium is unknown although we believe that it remains a technical problem North Korea still needs to solve."
• Seoul uses “deterrence diplomacy” in effort to avert North Korean provocation
  Posted on : Sep.17,2015 11:16 KST A poster in Pyongyang commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the foundation of the (North) Korean Workers’ Party, Sep. 15. North Korea is constructing a new building and cycling track for the occasion. (AP/Yonhap News) South Korean officials visiting the US preparing range of measures in case N. Korea goes ahead with rocket launch The South Korean government turned its focus to “deterrence diplomacy” on Sept. 16 with efforts to avert provocations from North Korea, which has recently hinted at plans to launch a long-range rocket and conduct a fourth nuclear test. Meanwhile, Pyongyang continued to go after Washington the same day with threats to turn the mainland United States into a “sea of fire.” Both Washington and Beijing issued messages declaring provocations to be “unacceptable.” Seoul’s major focus for now appears to be on coordinating with other countries, including the US and China. Hwang Joon-kook, the Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, traveled to Washington, D.C., on Sept. 15 after meeting with UN Security Council member countries in New York the day before as part of a recent US visit. Hwang, who is South Korea’s senior representative at the six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue, met with ambassadors from thirteen of the fifteen UNSC member countries - not including China and Spain - and reached an agreement with them to pursue additional UNSC sanctions against North Korea in according with the “triggers” in a previous resolution if it goes ahead with its rocket launch, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said. Hwang is scheduled to meet on Sep. 16 with US State Department Special Representative for North Korea policy Sung Kim, who is Washington’s senior delegate to the six-party talks. [Satellite] [Hysteria]
• N. Korea could have enough plutonium for seven to ten nuclear weapons
  Posted on : Sep.17,2015 11:30 KST After hint at a possible nuclear test, eyes on nuclear facility that was restored to operating order after dismantlement With North Korea hinting on Sep. 15 that it would carry out a nuclear test, attention is turning once again to the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, North Korea’s primary facility for developing nuclear weapons. The Yongbyon facility, located in Yongbyon County, North Pyongan Province, has a nuclear reactor and the reprocessing and enrichment equipment used to extract the plutonium and uranium required to manufacture nuclear weapons. Along with generating 5 megawatts of electricity, the reactor at Yongbyon doubles as a site for experiments. Spent fuel rods are reprocessed at the reactor to extract plutonium, which is then used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Reportedly, the facility is able to extract 6 kilograms of plutonium a year – enough to make one nuclear weapon. Certain parts were removed from the Yongbyon reactor to prevent it from being restored to its original state in less than a year after a number of accords, including the joint statement in the six-party talks on Sep. 19, 2005, the agreement on Feb. 13, 2007, and the disablement agreement on Oct. 3, 2007. North Korea demolished the cooling tower, which was a symbol of the reactor, in June 2008. [Yongbyon]
• Britain's nuclear plans: the Corbyn factor
  Paul Rogers 17 September 2015 In the debate about replacing the Trident nuclear system, there is space for options that link British to international experience. Jeremy Corbyn, the new leader of Britain's Labour Party, has long been opposed to the country's possession of nuclear weapons. But he has also made it clear that this personal commitment does not extend to forcing this policy on the party he now heads. What he does want is an open debate and to convince others of the value of his views. The replacement of the country's Trident nuclear system is now being discussed (see "Britain's defence policy: the path to change", 7 May 2015). If this were to go ahead and a similar system put in place, the development and lifetime costs will approach £100 billion. Almost everyone in the Conservative government and parliamentary party, and many Labour MPs themselves, believe that a replacement should be built and that Britain should remain a nuclear-weapons power. Yet there is a substantial minority across the electorate that agrees with Corbyn. This view has gained far more traction since it was adopted by the Scottish National Party, a shift prompted not least by the persistent campaigning of nuclear disarmers north of the border, including the Faslane 365 initative. Yet political polarisation means it will be difficult to realise Corbyn’s aims. [Nuclear disarmament] [Liberal] [Trident] [Corbyn]
• A False Move from N.Korea Would Have Dire Consequences
  North Korea has threatened to launch a long-range missile and nuclear attacks on "hostile" countries. The North is gearing up for the Oct. 10 anniversary of the Workers Party, so some degree of bluster is to be expected. But if Pyongyang goes ahead with the missile launch or nuclear test, the provocations would not only violate UN Security Council resolutions but also destroy any trust that was built up in the dramatic resolution of the latest military standoff with the South. [Media] [Satellite]
• N.Korea Resumes 'Normal Operations' at Nuclear Sites
  North Korea on Tuesday claimed all its nuclear facilities have resumed normal operations and threatened to use nuclear weapons against the U.S. and other "hostile" forces any time. "We're fully ready to respond anytime with nuclear weapons if the U.S. and hostile forces behave badly," the North's official Korean Central News Agency quoted a director of the atomic research institute as saying. The North's "nuclear scientists and engineers are performing feats every day in research and production to ensure reliable nuclear deterrence by endlessly increasing the quantitative and qualitative level of various nuclear weapons," the unnamed director claimed. "All nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, including a uranium enrichment plant, and a 5 MW graphite moderated reactor have been remodeled and they have begun normal operations," the director added. The announcement came a day after the North said it would "soon" send a satellite into space, which was read as the threat of another intercontinental ballistic missile test since the North has no viable satellite technology. KCNA on Monday reported, "The world will clearly see our rocket fly high at a time and a place that the [Workers] Party will set," Both announcements are widely seen as boosterism ahead of the 70th anniversary of the Workers Party next month. [Satellite] [Yongbyon] [Media] [Conditionality]
• North Korea sounding off with missile and nuclear threats
  Posted on : Sep.16,2015 15:43 KST A satellite image of Sohae launch pad in North Korea on Sep. 6, released by the North Korea affairs website 38 North on Sep. 15. No signs of launch preparations were found in the image. (38 North) Seoul could now seek to initiate dialogue, and approach upcoming divided family reunions separately North Korea is raising the alarm with threats of missiles (long-range rockets) and nuclear testing. The tactics are being seen as part of an attempt to send messages to the US, South Korea, and the North Korean public ahead of an upcoming US-China summit in September, the Workers' Party anniversary celebration on Oct. 10, a South Korea-US summit on Oct. 16, and reunions of divided family members scheduled for Oct. 20-26. Responding to questions from a Korean Central News Agency reporter on Sept. 15, the chief of North Korea's Atomic Energy Institute said the country was "constantly making qualitative improvements to various nuclear weapons and realizing continued innovations in research and production to ensure the reliability of the nuclear deterrent in all respects." "If the U.S. and other hostile forces persistently seek their reckless hostile policy towards the DPRK and behave mischievously, the DPRK is fully ready to cope with them with nuclear weapons any time," the report continued. The message was seen as warning that North Korea could embark on additional nuclear tests if the political situation deteriorates. [Media] [Satellite]
• [Editorial] North Korea only has more to lose by launching a long-range rocket
  Posted on : Sep.16,2015 15:51 KST A satellite image of the Yongbyon nuclear from 2004. , The Yongbyon reactor is North Korea’s main nuclear facility. It was shut down in 2007, and then restarted in 2013 after the North‘s last test of a nuclear device in 2013. A report from Sep. 15 said it is in “full operation.” After hinting that it might test a long-range missile on the pretext of launching a satellite, North Korea announced on Sep. 14 and 15 that it was continuing to improve the capabilty of its nuclear weapons. North Korea is playing the missile and nuclear weapon cards shortly before two US summits with the leaders of China and South Korea and the North Korean celebration on Oct. 10 of the 70th anniversary of the (North) Korean Workers’ Party. We urge North Korea to stop making threats with its missiles and nuclear weapons, since these could raise tensions on the Korean Peninsula and negatively affect inter-Korean relations. North Korea’s apparent intention is to make its launch of long-range rocket and its possession of nuclear weapons an established fact and to influence American and South Korean policy toward the North. The rocket used to put a satellite into orbit is fundamentally the same as a long-range ballistic missile with a nuclear weapon as its payload. In fact, North Korea has often launched a long-range rocket shortly before conducting a nuclear test. If the North launches such a long-range rocket, it is clear that the international community will initiate a discussion about placing additional sanctions on the North. The US has been particularly concerned about the fact that it could be the target of a long-range ballistic missile. Even if the North Korean leaders believe that they can increase their prestige and unite the public by launching a missile, they have much more to lose. We hope that North Korea will not engage in any rash behavior. [Satellite] [Yongbyon]
• South vows stern action against NK threats
  By Kim Hyo-jin The government vowed Tuesday to take stern action against North Korea's threats to launch a missile or conduct a nuclear test, in tandem with the United States and the international community. "A possible missile launch or nuclear test by North Korea are serious provocations and military threats," ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee said during a press briefing. [Satellite] [Yongbyon] [Media]
• North Korea says it has restarted its nuclear facilities, threatens the U.S.
  By Anna Fifield September 14 at 11:27 PM ? SEOUL — North Korea Tuesday announced that it had restarted its Yongbyon nuclear reactor and was ready to use nuclear weapons “any time” against the United States. The announcement came less than a day after North Korea said it was preparing to launch a long-range rocket and will heighten fears that Kim Jong Un wants to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the foundation of North Korea's ruling Workers’ Party on Oct. 10 with a literal bang. All of the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, including the uranium enrichment plant and 5 megawatt reactor, were now in “normal operation," the unnamed director of North Korea’s Atomic Energy Institute said, according to a report published Tuesday by the official Korean Central News Agency. [Media] [Conditionality] [Yongbyon] [Context]
• North Korea’s Sohae Facility: No Sign of Launch Preparations Yet
  15 September 2015 A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Jack Liu and Joseph S. Bermudez Despite continuing press speculation fed by North Korea’s public pronouncements, recent commercial satellite imagery of the Sohae Satellite Launching Station (“Tongchang-ri”) indicates no sign yet of preparations for a launch on the upcoming 70th anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) on October 10. In a September 14 interview with the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the Director of the National Aerospace Development Administration (NADA) asserted the DPRK’s right to peaceful space exploration, that “the world will clearly see a series of satellites soaring into the sky at the times and locations determined by the WPK Central Committee” and that scientists are working hard to celebrate the 70th anniversary “with greater scientific achievements.” These statements have been widely interpreted in the Western media to mean that the DPRK intends to launch a space launch vehicle (SLV) on October 10. Imagery from September 6 shows little or no activity at the recently modernized Sohae facility, including the gantry tower and pad that was the site of the 2012 Unha SLV launches. The work platforms at the gantry tower are clearly enclosed by an environmental shroud. Determining whether that shroud is hiding an SLV is difficult, but seems unlikely. [SLV]
• Anxiety rises over Abe omitting non-nuclear principles from Hiroshima speech
  August 07, 2015 Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s omission of the “three non-nuclear principles” during his speech in Hiroshima on Aug. 6 has caused concerns that Japan may be about to ditch a long-held and highly cherished philosophy. “We will make further efforts toward realization of a world without nuclear weapons,” Abe did say in this year's ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city on Aug. 6, 1945. But it's what he did not say that is causing anxiety, particularly among atomic bomb survivors. He failed to confirm the nation's three non-nuclear principles: Japan does not possess or produce nuclear weapons and also does not permit other countries to bring those weapons into Japan. [Abe Shinzo] [Japanese remilitarisation] [Nuclearisation]
• Japanese Strategic Weapons Programs and Strategies: Future Scenarios and Alternative Approaches
  Ian Easton Introduction The balance of power in Northeast Asia is shifting in ways that are dangerous to the security of Japan. That is certainly how the picture has appeared to the eyes of many observers in recent years. 1 The reasons are many, and they are compelling. First, China’s emergence as a regional military power has taken place in a far more disruptive fashion than was expected. Attempts to shape China into a “responsible stakeholder” have failed. Beijing now threatens Tokyo with a growing number of coercive air and maritime operations around the Japanadministered Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands. Chinese fighters, bombers, ships, and submarines have greatly expanded the scope of their training operations. They now frequently pass through Japan’s Ryukyu Island Chain on their way out into the Philippine Sea where they conduct exercises that undermine confidence in the ability of the U.S. Navy to intervene in a regional conflict.2 [Japanese remilitarisation] [Nuclearisation] [US Japan alliance]
• Seoul 'Poised to Test Long-Range Ballistic Missile'
  South Korea has almost completed the development of a new ballistic missile with a range of 800 km and is getting ready for a test launch, the military said Friday. In a parliamentary audit of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, an officer said, "We're considering test-launching a missile into open seas south of Korea's air defense identification zone. Waters south of the submerged rocks of Ieo are about 800 km away from the Agency for Defense Development's missile launch site in Taean, South Chungcheong Province. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Choi Yoon-hee takes an oath ahead of a parliamentary audit in Yongsan, Seoul on Friday. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Choi Yoon-hee takes an oath ahead of a parliamentary audit in Yongsan, Seoul on Friday. Seoul has been developing missiles with a range from 300 km to 800 km under new South Korea-U.S. missile guidelines revised in October 2012. If the missile works it could strike anywhere in North Korea from the southern coast. But the officer reversed his claim after the parliamentary audit came to an end, saying, "There was a misunderstanding in the process of answering a question about whether the country would have the space to test an 800 km-range missile. We have no immediate plan to test such a missile." [Ballistic missile] [Military balance]
• Still No Sign of Launch Preparations at North Korea’s Sohae Launch Facility
  By 38 North 03 September 2015 A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Jack Liu and Joseph S. Bermudez Summary While speculation that North Korea intends to launch a long-range space launch vehicle (SLV) on the 70th anniversary of the Korean Workers’ Party in October continues, it is still not possible to determine whether Pyongyang will conduct such a launch using commercial satellite imagery. Imagery from August 27 and September 1 show that a movable structure on the launch pad—intended to transfer SLV stages and components from the Stationary Preparation Building to the gantry tower—has shifted back and forth since observed in mid-August. [SLV]
• Obama pledged to reduce nuclear arsenal, then came this weapon
  By Len Ackland and Burt Hubbard / July 14, 2015 ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Standing next to a 12-foot nuclear bomb that looks more like a trim missile than a weapon of mass destruction, engineer Phil Hoover exudes pride. “I feel a real sense of accomplishment,” he said. But as Hoover knows, looks can be deceiving. He and fellow engineers at Sandia National Laboratories have spent the past few years designing, building and testing the top-secret electronic and mechanical innards of the sophisticated B61-12. Phil Hoover, an engineer at Sandia National Laboratories, shows off a flight test body for a B61-12 nuclear weapon. Sandia engineers have spent the past few years designing, building and testing the top-secret electronic and mechanical innards of the bomb. Phil Hoover, an engineer at Sandia National Laboratories, shows off a flight test body for a B61-12 nuclear weapon. Sandia engineers have spent the past few years designing, building and testing the top-secret electronic and mechanical innards of the bomb. Credit: Jerry Redfern for Reveal Later, when nuclear explosives are added at the federal Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, the bomb will have a maximum explosive force equivalent to 50,000 tons of TNT – more than three times more powerful than the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, 70 years ago this August that killed more than 130,000 people. The U.S. government doesn’t consider the B61-12 to be new – simply an upgrade of an existing weapon. But some contend that it is far more than that. [Nuclear weapons]

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AUGUST 2015

• No Third Use: An Interview With Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue
  July/August 2015 Interviewed by Daniel Horner Tomihisa Taue was elected mayor of Nagasaki in 2007 and began his third term in April. He is vice president of the international organization Mayors for Peace. Taue spoke by telephone with Arms Control Today from his office on June 15. In the conversation, which was conducted through an interpreter, he spoke about the possibility of a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama to Nagasaki, the concept of a Northeast Asian nuclear-weapon-free zone, and the need for the world to know and remember the facts of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. [NWFS]
• Haunting Map Shows All Nuclear Bombs That Exploded Since 1945
  The visualization features 2,153 nuclear detonations that have taken place. Jared Greenhouse Post-Production, HuffPost Live Posted: 08/26/2015 01:26 PM EDT | Edited: 08/27/2015 09:55 AM EDT A poignant new visualization shows all 2,153 atomic bomb detonations that happened across the globe since testing began in 1945, mapping out the where and when. During HuffPost Live's Nerds Forum segment (above) on Tuesday, a panel of science enthusiasts examined the map's many explosions and discussed the world's nuclear weapon history. Check out the map -- which is color-coded as red for atmospheric explosion, yellow for underground, and blue for underwater -- in its entirety below. [Test]
• Scientists Federation Insists that U.S. Is Cooking up a New Nuclear Bomb
  By: Len Ackland and Burt Hubbard | August 18, 2015 The United States government insists that the under-development B61-12 nuclear bomb isn’t a new weapon, that it’s just an update to an aging arsenal that already exists. That’s not a view shared by some American experts. Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert at the nonpartisan Federation of American Scientists in Washington, is resolute that the bomb violates a 2010 Obama administration pledge not to produce nuclear weapons with new military capabilities. “We do not have a nuclear guided bomb in our arsenal today,” Kristensen said. “It is a new weapon.” Kristensen’s organization was formed in 1945 by nuclear scientists who wanted to prevent nuclear war. And it’s not the maximum force of the B61-12 that worries him the most on that front. Instead, he says he fears that the bomb’s greater accuracy, thanks to an added tail assembly, coupled with the way its explosive force can be reduced electronically through a “dial-a-yield” system accessed by a hatch on the bomb’s body, increases the risk that a president might consider it tame enough for a future conflict. [Tactical Nuclear weapons]
• Response to PacNet #52 “Reward India’s nonproliferation good behavior”
  Aug 24, 2015 In PacNet #52, Kelly Wadsworth suggests that India should be rewarded for its good non-proliferation behavior by receiving full membership to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). This argument is problematic on several accounts. NSG members would be ill-advised to grant membership to India as a reward without looking at the broader issues that affect the non-proliferation regime. For starters, the NSG was established following the so-called peaceful nuclear explosion conducted by India in 1974 [India] [Nuclear strategy] [NPT] [Double standards]
• It’s time for India to rethink its nuclear policy
  21 August 2015 Author: Pushan Das, Observer Research Foundation India’s Pakistan dilemma continues, as Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif warned that they reserve the option of using nuclear weapons. The statement was made a week before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in July 2015 on the sidelines of the Shanghai Co-operation Organization summit at Ufa, Russia. But the meeting did little to abate either ceasefire violations along the borders or terrorism. An Indian army soldier guards near fencing on the line of control near Balakot sector in Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir, India, 17 August 2015. Talks between India and Pakistan have done little to prevent ceasefire violations. (Photo: AAP) Pakistani nuclear weapons have over the years provided it with a shield that constrains India from using military means in response to acts of cross-border terrorism. Pakistan’s introduction of battlefield nuclear weapons or Tactical Nuclear Weapons (TNWs) has lowered the threshold for nuclear conflict and has negated India’s conventional weapons superiority. [Nuclear strategy] [Equaliser]
• That terrible weapon - Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the unending fallout
  Premen Addy
  Hiroshima, 1945 The author has written Tibet on the Imperial Chessboard: The Making of British Policy towards Lhasa, 1899-1925 On August 6, 1945, the president of the United States of America, Harry S. Truman, gave the signal for the world's first atom bomb to be dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima from an aircraft. On August 9, the gruesome exercise was repeated on the city of Nagasaki, razing both to the ground. Thousands of inhabitants were incinerated where they stood, many thousands were maimed and many were condemned to a lingering death. Truman rhapsodized over the event from his Oval Office in the White House, proclaiming jubilantly the scientific achievement, the saving of American and Japanese lives, and the conclusion of the Second World War in the Asia-Pacific theatre. It took nearly a month longer for the formalities of Japan's Unconditional Surrender to be completed and sealed. It was the Soviet Union's defeat of the Kwantung army in Manchuria - the intervention apprehensively viewed in Washington and London, when both had once sought Soviet help in the war against Japan in order to minimize American casualties should an assault be mounted on the Home islands - that finally convinced the Japanese prime minister, Kantaro Suzuki, that Japan's cause was hopeless, that Unconditional Surrender was the only way out for his devastated nation. Yet, Japan's military rulers had begun, prior to these developments, to sue for peace, negotiating only the terms that would protect the Emperor Hirohito from the indignity of trial as a war criminal. Truman stalled, waiting impatiently at the Potsdam Summit of the Big Three for the results test of the atom bomb to come through. When the detailed report from General Leslie R. Groves arrived from the US on July 22, it confirmed the test to have been an outstanding success, beyond the expectations of the seniormost scientists responsible for the Manhattan Project. The news "pepped up" the American president. [Nuclear weapons] [1945] [Truman]
• North Korea’s Sohae Facility: No Sign of Launch Preparations; New Construction at Engine Test Stand
  By 38 North 19 August 2015 A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Jack Liu and Joseph S. Bermudez Summary Despite speculation that Pyongyang intends to conduct its fourth long-range rocket launch on the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea in October, with less than two months to go, recent commercial satellite imagery still shows no signs of launch preparations. As of mid-August, a rail-mounted structure, intended to transport the space launch vehicle (SLV) stages and other equipment from a new processing building on the launch pad to the gantry tower has been completed and aligned with that building. Whether that activity is related to continued work to complete the structures—such as installing equipment inside and checking out the buildings—or launch preparations remains unclear. [SLV]
• Why is Israel’s nuclear arsenal not mentioned in Iran deal debate?
  Israel has as many as 100 nuclear warheads and systems to deliver them But U.S. officials don’t mention them under a 1969 agreement Iranian nukes would challenge Israel’s unique Middle East position Mordechai Vanunu was released from an Israeli prison in 2004 after serving 18 years in prison for revealing details of Israel’s nuclear weapons program. The U.S. agreed in 1969 not to discuss Israel’s nuclear arsenal, which has not been mentioned during the current debate on the agreement with Iran. Nati Shohat Tribune Content Agency By Jonathan S. Landay There’s one major issue that President Barack Obama, his supporters and his critics assiduously have avoided as they battle over the deal designed to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons: Israel’s own nuclear arsenal. An open secret for decades, the Israeli stockpile is estimated at some 80-100 warheads, though Israel refuses to confirm or deny its existence under a policy of deliberate ambiguity. The arsenal was developed as the ultimate guarantor of the Jewish state’s survival against threats from its hostile neighborhood. Yet as the sides joust over the Iran deal’s impact on Israel’s security, Obama has been silent on the Israeli arsenal as a potential deterrent against Iranian cheating on the accord. Opponents, led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, haven’t touched the issue, either. And it hasn’t figured in the public hearings that Congress is holding as part of a 60-day review that will culminate in a Republican-led bid to kill the Iran accord next month. [Iran Deal] [Israel] [Nuclear weapons] [Double standards]
• Reader View: Hiroshima and Nagasaki: What now?
  Posted: Saturday, August 15, 2015 7:00 pm By Greg Mello The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 years ago marked a turning point in U.S. history from which this country never recovered. Many wartime leaders had warned against using the bomb, and after the war the Air Force Strategic Bombing Survey found it was of no material aid in ending the war. But despite or because of the horror and repressed guilt, we clung to it. We embraced a policy of threatened annihilation as a core principle of policy. Had we rejected the bomb, as many prestigious voices argued, postwar U.S. development would have been quite different. With the bomb in our pocket, we did not become a people of justice and equality, or a social democracy. Chris Hedges quotes D.H. Lawrence: “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never melted.” I would like to tell Hiroshima survivors that we have changed, but we have not. America is as brutal and violent as ever, at home and abroad. Recently, President Barack Obama bragged about bombing seven countries. E.L. Doctorow described our postwar devolution: “The bomb first was our weapon. Then it became our diplomacy. Next it became our economy. Now it’s become our culture. We’ve become the people of the bomb.” [Nuclear weapons] [US global strategy]
• Recent Imagery Suggests Increased Uranium Production in North Korea, Probably for Expanding Nuclear Weapons Stockpile and Reactor Fuel
  By Jeffrey Lewis 12 August 2015 Summary North Korea is expanding its capacity to mine and mill natural uranium. Recent commercial satellite imagery shows that, over the past year, Pyongyang has begun to refurbish a major mill located near Pyongsan that turns uranium ore into yellowcake.[1] The renovation suggests that North Korea is preparing to expand the production of uranium from a nearby mine. The question is: What will North Korea do with this uranium? One possibility is that North Korea will enrich the uranium to expand its stockpile of nuclear weapons. Another is that Pyongyang plans to produce fuel for the Experimental Light Water Reactor under construction at its Yongbon nuclear scientific research facility as well as future light-water reactors based on that model. [Uranium] [Media]
• How a secretive agency discovered the A-bomb’s effect
  By Susan Southard | 8/9/15, 6:52 PM CET | Updated 8/10/15, 12:36 PM CET Three years earlier, the United States had seized on what it saw as a critical and unique opportunity to conduct long-range scientific and medical research on hibakusha (“atomic bomb-affected people”) — which an Army Medical Corps senior researcher on atomic bomb effects had believed “may not again be offered until another world war.” To this end, President Harry Truman had signed an order to establish the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC), charged with studying atomic bomb survivors to determine how radiation exposure affected their health. U.S. leaders projected that the ABCC’s studies would offer the United States numerous military, scientific and regulatory benefits — including greater understanding of the impact of nuclear weapons currently in development, support for civil defense planning for potential nuclear attacks on U.S. cities and data for the reevaluation of international radiation dose limits for physicians, scientists, radiation workers and patients. These goals inadvertently reflected how little, prior to the atomic bombings, U.S. scientists and military officials knew about the immediate or long-term impact of whole-body radiation, and they foretold how blatantly the ABCC would ignore the medical needs of the survivors, conducting research only and failing to provide treatment of any kind. Why? Because U.S. leaders believed treating hibakusha would be akin to admitting responsibility for their injuries — a concession the government refused to make. [Nuclear weapons] [Hibakusha]
• America's Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 years later
  Tom Engelhardt and Christian Appy 6 August 2015 Will an American president ever offer a formal apology? Will our country ever regret the dropping of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man,” those two bombs that burned hotter than the sun? Hiroshima. Flickr/Xiquinho Silva. Some rights reserved. So many decades later, it’s hard to remember the kind of nuclear thinking top American officials engaged in during the Cold War. In secret National Security Council documents of the early 1950s, for instance, the country’s top strategists descended willingly into the charnel house of futuristic history, imagining life on this planet as an eternal potential holocaust. They wrote in those documents of the possibility that 100 atomic bombs, landing on targets in the United States, might kill or injure 22 million Americans and of a "blow" that might result in the "complete destruction" of the Soviet Union. And they weren’t just whistling Dixie. After all, in 1960, the top military brass found themselves arguing about the country’s first Single Integrated Operational Plan for nuclear war. In it, a scenario was laid out for delivering more than 3,200 nuclear weapons to 1,060 targets in the Communist world. Targets included at least 130 cities, which, if all went well, would cease to exist. Classified estimates of possible casualties from such an attack ran to 285 million dead and 40 million injured. That’s what “the complete destruction” of the Soviet Union and Communist China meant then and, until Dr. Strangelove hit the screens in 1964, those figures were simply part of the sort of “rational” war planning that led to perfectly serious debate about launching a “preemptive strike” – what, if another country were considering it, would have been a “war of aggression” – to eradicate that enemy. To give credit where it’s due, Army and Navy officials did worry "about the lethal impact of downwind fallout, with the Army explicitly concerned about limiting exposure of 'friendly forces and people' to radioactive fallout. By contrast, the Air Force saw no need for additional constraints [on surface nuclear blasts]." [Nuclear weapons] [1945]
• Assessing Recent Press Reports about Developments at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station
  By 38 North 04 August 2015 A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Tim Brown. It is understandable that press speculation is growing about what is going on at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station (Tonchang-ri) given the buzz about a possible space launch in October on the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK). The ROK Ministry of Defense and others are feeding this speculation. A case in point is a recent article from The Japan Times, quoted diplomatic sources that “U.S. intelligence agencies, believe,” that North Korea has [installed] a cover over the launch pad [at Sohae] in “an attempt to evade surveillance by spy satellites.” It also mentioned a roof that has been constructed covering the rail spur that trains carrying missile containers. Without seeing the imagery that US intelligence agencies refer to, its hard to figure out if there is a new development or, alternatively, whether reporters or their sources are confused about what is new and what isn’t. There hasn’t been a new commercial satellite image released of the launch pad at Sohae in over a month. [SLV]
• North Korea’s Development of a Nuclear Weapons Strategy
  By 38 North 03 August 2015 For almost six decades, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) has pursued a nuclear program that has gradually developed in size, complexity and capabilities from a small scientific research effort into a comprehensive effort to produce nuclear weapons. At present, North Korea is estimated to possess an inventory of 10-16 nuclear weapons that could rapidly expand by 2020. As this nuclear program has evolved, the North Korean leadership and the Korean People’s Army (KPA) have also gradually developed a nuclear strategy for deterrence that appears to have progressed from viewing these weapons as primarily political tools to deter an attack from the United States to operational strategic defensive weapons to inflict unacceptable losses upon attacking forces and assured retaliation, and possibly today, into viewing nuclear weapons as both strategic political weapons and for use in a range of strategic, operational and “battlefield” (i.e., tactical) situations during wartime. [Nuclear strategy]
• Algerians suffering from French atomic legacy, 55 years after nuke tests
  Compensation scheme has aided very few people, as Saharan residents experience cancers, blindness and birth defects March 1, 2015 5:00AM ET by Johnny Magdaleno @johnny_mgdlno Ahmed el-Hadj Hamadi was huddled into a building with the rest of his community by French soldiers early in the morning. They were instructed to lie down, close their eyes and cover their ears. He then remembers a sound like “the world coming to an end” and the windows turning white. A cord above their prone bodies swung erratically until the light bulb it held shattered. “I thought it was the apocalypse. We all did,” he said. “We all thought we might die.” Later, the French military began tasking out labor to residents in the isolated desert region of Algeria. “They had built a kind of village at the explosion area, and even put animals in it,” Hamadi added. “After the blast we were sent out to gather all the rubbish. The ground was all burned, white, liquid.” To nomadic communities around the town of Reggane, they’re known more than half a century later as “leopard skins” — stretches of sand across Algeria’s southern Sahara that are peppered with small black clumps. People used to collect scrap metal from the charred warplanes and trucks that emerge, fossil-like, and then smelt them into jewelry and kitchen utensils. But these Algerians were not properly warned of their danger after France’s misgoverned nuclear bomb-testing campaign of the early 1960s, which vitrified vast tracts of desert with heat and plutonium and left a legacy of uncontained radiation that is still crippling inhabitants. Estimates of the number of Algerians affected by testing range from 27,000 — cited by the French Ministry of Defense — to 60,000, the figure given by Abdul Kadhim al-Aboudi, an Algerian professor of nuclear physics. Yet there has been little accountability for France’s disregard. A compensation scheme for victims of France’s nuclear tests exists, but it has made payouts to only 17 people. The majority of those were residents of French Polynesia, where France relocated its nuclear testing campaign after leaving Algeria and experimented with more than 190 nuclear bombs from 1966 to 1996. [Test]
• Eliminating risks of nuclear war by accident, cyber-attack or conflict escalation
  Roundtable at the 132nd Assembly of the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Hanoi, Vietnam.
  15:00-16:30: Wednesday April 1, 2015 Room 309, National Convention Centre Organized by IPU and PNND New risks of nuclear weapons use are emerging due to conflicts involving nuclear-armed States, cyber-vulnerabilities and weapons systems maintained on high operational readiness. What roles can parliamentarians play to reduce and eliminate these risks? . The threat of full-scale nuclear war between the super-powers faded at the end of the Cold War. However, additional risks of nuclear weapons use have arisen as a result of emerging conflicts involving nuclear-armed States, possibilities of cyber-warfare involving infiltration of nuclear command systems, reliance on computer and cyber systems with nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, and new roles for nuclear weapons to respond to cyber-attacks. The 132nd IPU Assembly is considering a draft resolution entitled Cyber warfare: A serious threat to peace and global security. The intersection of cyber-threats and nuclear weapons gives rise to specific security concerns that require consideration and action by parliaments. This workshop will therefore cover policy options to reduce or eliminate: •Nuclear threats from accident or miscalculation; •The risks of nuclear weapons use in regional conflicts; •Cyber-attacks involving nuclear weapons command and control systems; •Reliance on nuclear deterrence in response to cyber-warfare. [Nuclear weapons] [Disarmament]

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JULY 2015

• North Korea: Sohae Facility Ready to Support Future SLV Launch; Preparations for Engine Testing Identified
  By 38 North 28 July 2015 A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Tim Brown and Jack Liu. Summary Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates that construction begun in spring 2015 after the earlier modification of the Sohae gantry for space launch vehicles (SLVs) has been completed. It appears that the SLV stages and payload can be prepared horizontally in a new launch support building at the end of the pad, then transferred to a movable support structure that is several stories high, where they will be erected vertically, checked out and finally moved to the launch tower. Imagery of the Sohae engine test stand also indicates that preparations were underway as of July 21, including the presence of a moveable crane and probable ground support equipment, for an engine test in the near-term. A subsequent unconfirmed Yonhap report on July 24 stated that a test had taken place. Construction of a shelter covering the Sohae rail spur where SLV stages and associated equipment are delivered from offsite has also been completed. The shelter would prevent the observation of rail activity at this location, and make it more difficult to observe the arrival of missile-related railcars and shipping containers by satellite imagery. Despite these developments and statements by the ROK Ministry of Defense that Pyongyang is likely to conduct a “strategic provocation” around the time of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea, there are still no indications at Sohae that test preparations are underway to support a long-range SLV launch. There is also no public evidence to suggest that a decision has been made by the leadership in Pyongyang to move forward with a launch. In the coming weeks, if preparations are indeed underway, we would expect to see other on-the ground indications at Sohae including increased rail activity and the possible arrival of missile related railcars, activity at facilities associated with rocket assembly, the filling of oxidizer and fuel storage tanks associated with the launch pad, activity at range radars intended to track a launch and possibly the arrival of VIPs to observe a launch. [SLV] [Satellite]
• North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Facility: Sporadic Operations at the 5 MWe Reactor But Construction Elsewhere Moves Forward
  By 38 North 24 July 2015 A 38 North exclusive with analysis by William Mugford. Summary Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates that North Korea’s 5 MWe Plutonium Production Reactor may not be operating or is only functioning at low power levels. The presence of what is likely a vehicle to transport carbon dioxide used in the reactor’s cooling system may indicate that maintenance activities are underway. The reactor appears to have been operating only sporadically since fall 2014 perhaps because the facility is aging. Construction that began in late spring 2015 continues at the incomplete Experimental Light Water Reactor (ELWR). Imagery from July 21 shows that the construction adjacent to the reactor hall can now be identified as a transformer yard to connect the electricity producing reactor to the grid. The yard appears to be complete but all the equipment is probably not yet installed. Once finished, the North Koreans will have taken another step towards beginning initial operation of the reactor. Work also continued at a rapid pace at the Uranium Enrichment complex at Yongbyon. The roof of the building that contains the probable hot cells is nearly externally complete, as is the large unidentified L-shaped building. [Yongbyon]
• Effort to overhaul nuclear missile system expected to begin this fall
  By Brian Everstine, Staff writer 10:16 a.m. EDT July 11, 2015 The Air Force will take a major step toward overhauling its Cold War-era nuclear missiles this fall, with plans to field hundreds of the weapons even as it must comply with a treaty calling for reductions alongside Russia. The service expects to spend $62.3 billion over 30 years on 642 missiles, 400 of which would be operationally deployed, according to an Arms Control Association review of internal Air Force documents. The service had 447 deployed missiles as of last fall, and the reduction would keep the Air Force within New START reduction requirements. Plans also call for new ground control stations, new command and control systems and replacing the flight system. Contractors vying for the next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile system expect the Air Force to call for proposals this fall. In its fiscal 2016 budget request currently making its way through Congress, the Air Force is requesting $76.1 million to begin research and development of the new system. [Military balance] [Military expenditure] [Double standards] [Nuclear weapons] [Missiles]
• `NK may fire long-range missile'
  By Jun Ji-hye North Korea has almost completed extension work at a long-range missile launching pad near its border with China, according to military sources Wednesday. South Korean military authorities are focusing on the possibility that the North could launch a long-range missile or rocket around Oct. 10 when it will celebrate the 70th anniversary of the foundation of its ruling Workers' Party. Pyongyang began to build the extension of the 50-meter-tall gantry in 2013 and has made it higher by 17 meters, sources said apparently on the basis of satellite imagery. The new 67-meter-tall gantry has been spotted at the Dongchang-ri site, North Pyeongan Province, which the repressive state calls the Sohae Satellite Launching Station. Sohae means West Sea in Korean. [SLV] [Media]
• Strategic Warning and China’s Nuclear Posture: What the 2015 Defense White Paper tells us about China’s nuclear policy.
  By Tong Zhao May 28, 2015 China’s last national defense white paper – the most authoritative document on its defense and security policy – caused quite a stir when it was released two years ago. Some foreign analysts were concerned that China was changing its long-standing policy of No-First-Use (NFU) of nuclear weapons because this policy was not mentioned in the document. Chinese experts quickly pointed out that the absence of NFU pledge from that white paper did not imply a weakened Chinese commitment to NFU. They argued that, starting in 2013, China changed the format of its defense white papers from a comprehensive format to a thematic approach which focuses on a specific topic. The 2013 paper focused on “The Diversified Employment of China’s Armed Forces” and therefore was not designed to thoroughly delineate China’s nuclear policy. This explanation seems to be confirmed now as the newest 2015 white paper – which was released on May 26, 2015 – again uses the thematic format and focuses on “China’s Military Strategy,” instead of offering a comprehensive review of every aspect of China’s defense policy. But, having learned lessons from last time, China made sure to include its NFU commitment in this year’s document. China also reaffirms in this white paper that its nuclear weapons are only for two purposes – “strategic deterrence and nuclear counterattack.” It essentially removes any doubt that China might use nuclear weapons in conventional scenarios. This should put the debate about whether China has changed its NFU policy to an end. That said, the most important part about China’s nuclear posture in this white paper is not the reaffirmation of NFU policy, but its mentioning for the first time that China seeks to “improve strategic early warning” for its nuclear forces. [Nuclear strategy] [NFU]
• Russia to Launch First Satellite for New Space Defense Network in November
  The first early warning ground-based station for the new network has been built in the Altay region and it has passed state trials. Russia to Develop System to Block Satellite Signals, Shut Down Missiles KRASNOGORSK (Sputnik) — The development of Russia's new unified missile early warning network is proceeding on schedule, the first satellite of the space component will be launched in November 2015, a senior Aerospace Defense Forces (ADF) commander said Monday. "Everything is going according to the schedule, approved by the Russian defense minister," said Maj. Gen. Oleg Maydanovich, chief of the ADF Space Command. "We are practically ready to put the first satellite in high-elliptic orbit in November," Maydanovich said. He added that the first early warning ground-based station for the new network has been built in the Altay region and it has passed state trials. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu annouced in October last year that Russia had started the development of a new unified network to detect ballistic missile launches, which would comprise new-generation satellites, new ground-based space monitoring stations and advanced computer networks.

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JUNE 2015

• Pentagon Says It Needs $270 Billion to Upgrade Nuclear Arsenal
  Military.com Jun 25, 2015 | by Kris Osborn The United States will need to spend as much as $18 billion per year for 15 years starting in 2021 to keep the nation's nuclear stockpile and the weapons and vehicles designed to deliver these weapons viable, Pentagon leaders told lawmakers. "We've developed a plan to transition our aging system. Carrying out this plan will be an expensive proposition. It is projected to cost DoD an average of $18 billion a year from 2021 through 2035," Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work told members of the House Armed Services Committee at Thursday's hearing on nuclear deterrence. "The only existential threat to our nation is a nuclear attack. Nuclear weapons remain the most important mission we have," he added. Work explained that keeping the country's nuclear enterprise modernized is especially important in light of the advancements made by Russia and China. The U.S. Navy and Air Force have already seen problems creep up with operations and morale within their nuclear forces. Both services faced cheating scandals in recent years. The Air Force's two top leaders were fired in 2008 after former Defense Secretary Robert Gates faulted the leaders for losing focus on the nuclear mission. The Pentagon is already pursuing several acquisition efforts to boost the nuclear triad, but many have high price tags and the Air Force and Navy are trying to figure out how to pay for them under restricted budgets. The Air Force plans to announce a contract this summer for its next-generation bomber program, called the Long Range Strike Bomber, or LRS-B. The Navy is working with Congress to secure funding for its Ohio Replacement Program, a new-generation of nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines slated to arrive by the early 2030s. The new LRS-B planes are expected to cost about $550 million each and the Navy hopes it can keep the cost of its Ohio Replacement submarines for under $5 billion per boat. Many defense analysts have called those estimates ambitious after the services have had a record for going over budget in recent years on other big budget acquisition programs like the Joint Strike Fighter and the Ford-class aircraft carrier. Congress has identified a new National Sea Based Deterrence fund designed to identify money to pay for the Ohio Replacement submarines, however most of the needed money for the fund has yet to be identified.
  Russian Saber Rattling Work stressed that Russian, Chinese and North Korean nuclear weapons development continues to engender a dangerous and high-threat global environment. "While we seek a world without nuclear weapons, we face the harsh reality that Russia and China are rapidly modernizing their already capable nuclear arsenals - and North Korea intends to develop nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them against the United States. A strong nuclear deterrent force will remain critical to our national security," Work said [Nuclear weapons] [Pretext]
• Nuclear Strategies of Emerging Nuclear Powers: North Korea and Iran
  May 01, 2015 by Vipin Narang What if nuclear aspirants get the bomb? How likely are they to use it? Which nuclear strategies might emerging nuclear powers adopt? These may seem like academic questions, but they are loaded with strategic significance. Different nuclear strategies have historically been associated with distinct types of risk. Some nuclear strategies are more likely to deter U.S. freedom of action; some more sharply increase the risk of accidental or unauthorized nuclear use. The type of nuclear posture or strategy a state is likely to choose, then, ought to affect the price the international community is willing to pay to stop or rollback emerging nuclear powers. These questions merit urgent answers. North Korea is believed to have at least a rudimentary plutonium-based nuclear weapons capability, is presently assessed to have a uranium enrichment capability to expand its fissile material stockpile, and periodically threatens to restart its plutonium production pathway. The international community is intensively trying to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear weapons capability based on uranium enrichment. Much policy and academic energy has centered on trying to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. But if these efforts fail, what next? Which nuclear strategy might these states choose? [Nuclear strategy]
• Why North Korea Wants Mutually Assured Destruction
  A look at what Pyongyang is seeking and why. By Van Jackson June 04, 2015 North Korea’s rhetoric suggests it’s willing and able to launch nuclear first-strikes on South Korea, Japan, and even the United States. Such rhetoric promotes fear among those who believe that any strikes or retaliation against Pyongyang could lead to a nuclear conflict. But such a North Korean nuclear posture, described as “asymmetric escalation,” is simply not credible during peacetime. Instead, North Korea is on a trajectory to establish a secure second-strike nuclear posture that all but guarantees regime survival and freedom to coerce South Korea from a position of safety. [Nuclear strategy]
• Update on North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Facility
  By 38 North 17 June 2015 A 38 North exclusive with analysis by William Mugford Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates that North Korea has initiated new construction at its still incomplete experimental light water reactor (ELWR) at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center. Imagery from May 24, 2015 shows Pyongyang is building a structure probably intended to support transformers and power distribution equipment for the production of electricity. Nearby power lines can be extended to the building once it is completed, allowing the North to begin reactor operations when ready. It remains unclear, however, whether any other additional work needs to be completed before the North can start reactor operations. [Yongbyon]
• Cyber threats and the challenge of de-alerting US and Russian nuclear forces
  by Andrew Futter 15 June 2015 I. Introduction Andrew Futter writes ‘A quarter of a century after the end of the Cold War, both the United States and Russia retain a significant number of nuclear weapons … capable of inflicting almost unimaginable damage, death and devastation.’ Futter argues that ‘the logic of de-alerting these nuclear forces and enhancing the safety and security of nuclear systems is becoming increasingly persuasive and urgent….. [T]his appears to be becoming particularly pronounced as we move into a era increasingly dominated by the threat of “cyber attacks”.’ Andrew Futter is a Senior Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Leicester, UK. Ajf57@le.ac.uk. A quarter of a century after the end of the Cold War, both the United States and Russia retain a significant number of nuclear weapons on “hair-trigger” alert, able to launch up to 1,800 warheads towards their designated targets in a matter of minutes.[1] In fact, and despite the widespread and substantial cuts that have been made to US and Russian nuclear forces over the previous three decades, and the many systems that have been removed from service, retired or dismantled, the weapons currently on continuous alert remain capable of inflicting almost unimaginable damage, death and devastation. In an era where it is becoming increasingly possible that “hackers” might steal sensitive nuclear-related operational or design information, “spoof” early warning systems, sabotage weapons and associated infrastructure, command and control facilities or critical communications, potentially cause a nuclear launch or explosion, and in a worst case scenario trigger nuclear war, the logic of de-alerting these nuclear forces and enhancing the safety and security of nuclear systems is becoming increasingly persuasive and urgent. While there has always been a chance that keeping nuclear systems at such a high state of readiness could lead to miscalculation, accidental or unauthorized launches, and the past is littered with examples of nuclear near misses and narrowly averted nuclear crises[2], this appears to be becoming particularly pronounced as we move into a era increasingly dominated by the threat of “cyber attacks”. [Cyber attacks] [Nuclear weapons]
• North Korea’s nuclear force roadmap: hard choices
  by Peter Hayes and Roger Cavazos NAPSNet Special Report 2 March 2015 In this report Peter Hayes and Roger Cavazos lay out a possible roadmap for North Korea’s nuclear operational force. The authors state: “The laws of physics that determine how nuclear weapons and delivery systems perform are the same in North Korea as anywhere else, in spite of North Korean voluntarist thinking and improvised practice found in all domains of North Korean life. Conversely, North Korean ideology will inflect how strategic options are shaped and deployed within these physical parameters, possibly in ways alien to western strategic thinking. Finally, North Korea has stated its intentions and demonstrated its capabilities in observable ways, providing a limited but substantial empirical basis for analysis and interpretation of this threat which will only continue to grow.” [Nuclear weapons]
• Government plans to build two more nuclear reactors to meet rising demand
  Posted on : Jun.9,2015 15:53 KST Modified on : Jun.9,2015 15:53 KST International environmental activist group Greenpeace shines a laser image on the Gori nuclear power plant in Busan, April 28. The image reads, “Shut down Kori reactor 1”. The design life of Kori’s reactor 1 was extended in 2008. Since then, it has had a series of minor accidents and breakdowns. (provided by Greenpeace) Critics say plans for to expand nuclear power were made without transparency or consulting with locals in candidate sites The government has announced plans to build two additional nuclear power reactors by 2029. The decision is expected to draw a backlash from residents in the candidate sites for the new reactors and fuel an ongoing debate by politicians and civic groups over the expansion of nuclear power and the shutdown of outdated reactors, including Kori Nuclear Power Plant Reactor 1, where a decision must be made by June 18 on whether to request another lifespan extension. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MTIE) submitted its seventh basic power supply plan for 2015-2029 to the National Assembly on June 8, with plans for the construction of additional nuclear power plants [Nuclear energy]
• US says North Korea may be operating another nuclear facility
  Posted on : Jun.8,2015 16:37 KST Modified on : Jun.8,2015 16:37 KST 2015 Report on Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments Official report submitted to Congress does not specify evidence for additional facility for uranium enrichment An official report that the US State Department recently submitted to Congress assessed that North Korea is running a secret nuclear facility in addition to Yongbyon. In the 2015 Report on Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments, which the US State Department submitted to Congress last week, the department said, “The United States believes there is a clear likelihood of additional unidentified nuclear facilities in the DPRK.” DPRK is North Korea’s formal name, standing for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. This is the first time that the US State Department has expressed its opinion in an official document about intelligence related to additional North Korean nuclear facilities. The document does not specify what evidence there may be for this opinion.http://www.state.gov/t/avc/rls/rpt/2015/243224.htm After visiting the nuclear enrichment facilities at Yongbyon in Nov. 2010, Siegfried Hecker, a nuclear physicist and expert on North Korea‘s nuclear program, assessed that North Korea had a secret facility somewhere other than Yongbyon for producing highly enriched uranium (HEU). American intelligence agencies have shared this perspective. Based on this judgment, the US government has demanded that North Korea make public the nuclear facilities it has in addition to Yongbyon as a precondition for resuming dialogue. Reportedly, North Korea has been very sensitive on this issue. [Uranium] [HEU]
• 2015 Report on Adherence to and Compliance With Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments
  June 5, 2015 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION PURPOSE SCOPE OF THE REPORT ADHERENCE TO AGREEMENTS U.S. Organizations and Programs to Evaluate and Ensure Treaty Compliance OVERVIEW PART I: U.S. COMPLIANCE WITH ARMS CONTROL, NONPROLIFERATION, AND DISARMAMENT AGREEMENTS AND COMMITMENTS U.S. INSTITUTIONAL AND PROCEDURAL ORGANIZATION FOR ENSURING COMPLIANCE U.S. COMPLIANCE Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty TTBT, PNET, and LTBT 1925 Geneva Protocol CFE Treaty and Vienna Document 2011 (VD11) Treaty on Open Skies (OST) Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START Treaty or NST) PART II: COMPLIANCE WITH TREATIES AND AGREEMENTS CONCLUDED BILATERALLY WITH THE SOVIET UNION OR ITS SUCCESSOR STATES INTERMEDIATE-RANGE NUCLEAR FORCES (INF) TREATY NEW START TREATY (NST) PART III: OTHER STATES’ (INCLUDING SUCCESSOR STATES’) COMPLIANCE WITH MULTILATERAL AGREEMENTS BIOLOGICAL AND TOXIN WEAPONS CONVENTION (BWC) China Egypt Iran North Korea Pakistan Russia Syria TREATY ON CONVENTIONAL ARMED FORCES IN EUROPE (CFE) VIENNA DOCUMENT 2011 ON THE NEGOTIATIONS ON CONFIDENCE- AND SECURITY-BUILDING MEASURES (VD11) Russia Armenia Azerbaijan Kyrgyzstan Uzbekistan CHEMICAL WEAPONS CONVENTION (CWC) NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY (NPT) Burma Iran North Korea Syria TREATY ON OPEN SKIES (OST) Russia and Belarus Airspace Restrictions Russia Air Traffic Control Facilitation Airfield Closures for Holidays First Generation Duplicate Negative Film PART IV: OTHER STATES’ (INCLUDING SUCCESSOR STATES’) COMPLIANCE WITH THEIR INTERNATIONAL COMMITMENTS MISSILE NONPROLIFERATION COMMITMENTS China MORATORIA ON NUCLEAR TESTING INTRODUCTION PURPOSE This Report is submitted pursuant to Section 403 of the Arms Control and Disarmament Act, as amended (22 U.S.C. 2593a), which requires a report by the President on Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments. [HEU]
• N.Korea Shows Footage of Submarine-Launched Missile
  North Korea on Thursday published footage of what it claimed was the successful launch of a submarine-based ballistic missile. The two-minute clip posted on the propaganda website Uriminzokkiri shows a projectile that appears to be a ballistic missile being launched from a black submerged vessel as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un watches through binoculars. Kim is then heard to hail the launch as a major accomplishment. The clip says the successful launch will enable Pyongyang to conduct underwater missions "as it wishes" and to strike its enemies "from the sea." North Korean leader Kim Jong-un waves to the crew of a submarine from which a ballistic missile was launched, in this video clip released by the Norths Central TV on Thursday. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un waves to the crew of a submarine from which a ballistic missile was launched, in this video clip released by the North's Central TV on Thursday. North Korea revealed another clip a couple of weeks later after the launch, but itas authenticity was questioned. A Unification Ministry official said, "North Korea's intent in unveiling the footage appears aimed at showing off its military might and threatening the Seoul-Washington alliance." Meanwhile, the regime seems to have replaced Army chief Hyon Yong-chol, who was executed recently, with Pak Yong-sik, the military's top political officer. A government source here said Pak has recently been spotted accompanying Kim on visits to military bases, while his name was mentioned on May 29 even before Ri Jae-il, the man in charge of propaganda at the Workers Party. [SLBM]
• North Korea’s Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site: Spring Construction and Maintenance Activities Continue
  By 38 North 05 June 2015 A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Jack Liu Summary Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates that North Korea is conducting regular spring construction and maintenance activities at its Punggye-ri nuclear test site. There are no indications of nuclear test preparations at this time. Given the time and effort such preparations require, North Korea is unlikely to conduct another nuclear test until at least fall 2015 at the earliest. [Test]
• From Under the Sea: North Korea’s Latest Missile Test
  By Michael Elleman 03 June 2015 On May 9, 2015, North Korea’s state-run media, KCNA, aired a series of still images of a ballistic missile bursting through the ocean’s surface and igniting its main engine, all under the attentive eyes of Kim Jong Un. The authenticity of the images initially released by KCNA is unknown, as is the date of the test. The precise nature of the test is still unclear, as is the type of missile used. What is clear, however, is that a video summarizing the test produced and posted on North Korea’s propaganda website, Uriminzokkiri, included inauthentic footage of a missile launched from underwater in an attempt to exaggerate Pyongyang’s progress in developing a sea-based capability. The footage shows a solid-propellant missile being ejected from a submarine-launch tube, breaking through the sea surface and accelerating upward. The “missile” captured in the still photos of the North Korean test clearly depict a liquid-propellant engine. Photo analysis by Dave Schmerler highlights the sloppy editing job by the North Koreas, and the similarities to a known US underwater launch, most likely of a dated Trident missile launch. Despite the doctored video, the test captured by still photographs indicates Pyongyang’s determination to create additional capacity—real or imaginary—to threaten its regional rivals, US interests in Asia and possibly the US mainland with ballistic missiles armed with nuclear weapons. In the regional context, submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) offer North Korea a deployment option that is less vulnerable to preemptive strikes. Perhaps of greater importance, SLBMs can be fired from positions north, east, south and west of Japan, South Korea, Guam and other East Asian countries, a capability that greatly complicates missile defense planning and, if realized, could compromise defenses across the region. From a global perspective, an operational fleet of submarines armed with ballistic missiles, if developed successfully, could extend North Korea’s strategic reach, a capacity Pyongyang might view as a viable alternative to the difficult task of developing an arsenal of operational intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). [SLBM]
• Seoul Tests New Ballistic Missile
  President Park Geun-hye looked on as the Agency for Defense Development test-fired a new ballistic missile with a range of more than 500 km in South Chungcheong Province on Wednesday. The new missile is capable of hitting anywhere in North Korea. This was the first time since the U.S. relaxed missile controls on South Korea in late 2012 that Seoul has openly test-fired a new missile with a range of more than 500 km. It was also the first time in 30 years that the president has ever visited the test site. The missile, dubbed Hyunmu-2B, is to be part of South Korea’s own missile defense system that aims to detect and destroy incoming enemy missiles in the air. A Defense Ministry official said, "We can't disclose the exact range, but we can say it can hit anywhere in the North." South Korea was limited to 300 km in range for its ballistic missiles under Seoul-Washington missile guidelines from 2001, but the range was extended to 800 km in 2012. Since last year, the military has successfully tested several missiles with a range of 500 km. "It's still too early to test-fire a missile with a range of 800 km," a military source said. "The latest test is similar to a secret test we conducted last year." Military authorities are expected to deploy missiles with a range of 500 km warfare-ready this year. South Korea's new ballistic missile has a shorter range than the North's Rodong and Musudan missiles, which can fly between 1,300 and 4,000 km, but is reportedly more accurate. englishnews@chosun.com / Jun. 04, 2015 12:01 KST [Ballistic missile] [Double standards] [US dominance]
• Is North Korea Gearing Up for Another Space Launch?
  By Jeffrey Lewis 02 June 2015 On May 8, KCNA carried a typically vituperative essay by North Korea’s national space authority stating that “No matter who dares grumble and no matter how all hostile forces challenge the launch, satellites of Juche Korea will soar into the space one after another at the time and place designated and decided by the supreme leadership of the Korean revolution.” The new statement follows extensive coverage in recent months of North Korea’s space ambitions. On May 4, North Korean state media showed Kim Jong Un visiting “the newly-built General Satellite Control Centre of the National Aerospace Development Administration (NADA).” The new center looks like something out of the Jetson’s but with a monumental oil painting of Kim Jong Il contemplating a rocket dominating the entrance to remind you this is still North Korea. The statement is the latest in a series of stories that highlight the role that space technology plays in North Korea’s economic development and national defense. The visit by Kim to see this “splendid edifice” is perhaps more significant. The new control center shows in a dramatic way what the statement says in words: North Korea’s space ambitions are real, however incongruous they may appear against the backdrop of the country’s poverty and political repression. [SLV]
• U.S. Draft Bill Call N.Korea 'Nuclear-Armed Country'
  A defense policy bill under deliberation by the U.S. Senate for the first time openly calls North Korea a "nuclear-armed country." The question has raised some eyebrows since the U.S. maintains an official fiction that North Korea is not a nuclear power and therefore undeserving of equal treatment. In a section that assesses the current global nuclear environment, the draft National Defense Authorization Act for 2016 says, "During the 25 years preceding the date of the enactment of this Act, additional countries have obtained nuclear weapons. North Korea is a nuclear-armed country and Iran aspires to acquire a nuclear weapons capability." Some pundits worry that if the North is recognized as a nuclear weapons state as defined by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, international efforts aimed at dismantling its nuclear program might need to be turned into disarmament talks. But both Seoul and Washington say the term "nuclear-armed country" in the draft bill simply reflects an assessment of the North's capability. "Both Seoul and Washington are clear on their position that they can't recognize Pyongyang's status as a nuclear weapons state," a government source here said. But another government official here said, "They should be very careful in selecting the term." [Nuclear weapons]
• Nuclear Threat and Korean Reunification
  by Peter Hayes 1 June 2015 I. Introduction In this Policy Forum Peter Hayes writes that “reunification will become harder and increase in social, economic, and security cost the longer and deeper the DPRK develops nuclear weapons. The faster nuclear weapons are removed from the scene, the sooner reunification can commence at a cheaper cost, with much lower risk of war and nuclear wear. The longer we wait, the more the policy choice becomes stark and binary.” Peter Hayes is Co-founder and Executive Director of Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability; Honorary Professor at the Center for International Security Studies, Sydney University, Australia. The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Nautilus Institute. Readers should note that Nautilus seeks a diversity of views and opinions on significant topics in order to identify common ground. This paper was originally given at the Jeju Forum, 2015, as ‘Remarks to Jeju Forum Panel: Pathways to Korean Reunification: Opportunities and Challenges’. This paper addresses two key questions posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons for potential pathways to Korean reunification. These are: 1.Is denuclearization of North Korea a prerequisite for Korean unification? 2.If not, how should we handle North Korea’s nuclear weapons program? To answer these questions, it is necessary to place Korean unification in the context of current inter-Korean, regional, and global security dynamics over short (new few years), medium (next five to ten years) and long (ten to thirty year) timelines. In considering reunification, which will be a multi-generational process given the depth and longevity of the separation since division, and the previous damage to Korean society from Japanese colonial occupation, the answers to these two questions should be reviewed against what I call the six generation or 200 year rule. This is the need to expand the scope of the analysis from the “immediate” present from now to perhaps 20 years to the “long present” into which 200 years are compressed, that is, the last 100 years of history, there being people alive today for whom these events are still fresh in their minds; and the next 100 years, there being people born today who will be alive in 100 years, all of whom will play a role in a social process as profound as national reunification. I will return to this consideration in my conclusion. In sum, my answer to these two questions is that reunification will become harder and increase in social, economic, and security cost the longer and deeper the DPRK develops nuclear weapons. The faster nuclear weapons are removed from the scene, the sooner reunification can commence at a cheaper cost, with much lower risk of war and nuclear wear. The longer we wait, the more the policy choice becomes stark and binary. [Unification] [Nuclear weapons]

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MAY 2015

• North Korea could double its number of nuclear warheads by next year
  By Sharon Squassoni May 11, 2015 While the world focused its attention this spring on mitigating the potential nuclear threat from Iran, North Korean advances in building its nuclear weapons arsenal have finally made even the Chinese anxious. For the first time, Chinese warnings of the North Korean threat exceed those of Americans. In meetings earlier this spring, unofficial Chinese briefings suggested that North Korea could double its number of warheads from 20 to 40 by next year through production of highly enriched uranium (HEU). In 2013, satellite images suggested the DPRK had expanded its enrichment facilities. If true, there could be several dangers here. First, a production capacity for HEU using centrifuges is hard to turn off, for technical reasons. This could mean a significant surge in production with no civilian outlets (North Korea has been building a light water reactor that would use low-enriched uranium fuel, but it does not seem to be operational yet). A North Korea that can add 10 nuclear warheads to its arsenal per year would pose a significant threat to China, which has about 240 nuclear warheads now. Second, as North Korea’s arsenal grows, it is likely to look for additional roles and missions for those weapons. It is also likely to expand the kinds of delivery vehicles for those weapons. Finally, many observers fear that an industrial capability to build nuclear weapons will render North Korea’s denuclearization a pipedream. This leaves only one option for denuclearization: regime collapse. And that will be a very messy scenario, indeed. [Threat] [Media]
• North Korea: New Construction at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station
  By 38 North 28 May 2015 A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Tim Brown. Summary Recent commercial satellite imagery shows new construction at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station (“Tongchang-ri”), specifically at the site used to launch the Unha space launch vehicle (SLV), most recently in 2012. While the upgrading of the gantry to support a space launch vehicle larger than the Unha was essentially completed by late 2014, Pyongyang has been further modifying the launch area to include a new support building at the east end of the pad as well as a platform that appears to move along rails from that building to the launch tower. While the exact purpose of this building remains unclear, one possibility is that the North Koreans are building a complex similar to facilities observed in China, such as at the Jiuquan Launch Center, that include buildings where the launch vehicle is assembled, processed, and checked, then placed on a movable platform and rolled to the launch tower. As work moves to completion, a more definitive conclusion will be possible.[1][2] [SLV]
• A sustainable South Korea should stick with nuclear
  21 May 2015 Author: Sanghyun Hong, University of Adelaide Since the 1970s, nuclear power has provided cheap, stable and clean electricity that has fuelled South Korea’s rapid economic growth. Currently, 23 nuclear power plants with a total capacity of 21 gigawatts of electric energy are generating 27 per cent of South Korea’s total electricity needs. The wholesale price of nuclear power, US$52 per megawatt hour (MWh) in 2014, is still cheaper than coal (US$61/MWh) without any form of carbon pricing. Nuclear power, which is a zero-emission source, also has limited greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at below 500 kilograms per megawatt hour each year. A fire drill is underway at the Weolseong Nuclear Power Complex in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, on 28 October 2014. (Photo: AAP) Is renewable energy a viable alternative to coal and nuclear in South Korea? The simple answer is no. There are already no rivers in South Korea that flow to the ocean without passing through a hydropower station. Solar power is not feasible due to low levels of solar irradiance. And even if all South Korea’s wetlands were used for tidal power, all the terrestrial and marine natural parks were changed to wind farms and all buildings were covered by photovoltaic cells, the maximum electricity generation from renewables could not provide more than 30 per cent of total electricity consumed in 2010. [Nuclear energy]
• Pentagon Report: China Deploys MIRV Missile
  Posted on May.11, 2015 in China, By Hans M. Kristensen The biggest surprise in the Pentagon’s latest annual report on Chinese military power is the claim that China’s ICBM force now includes the “multiple independently-targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRV)-equipped Mod 3 (DF-5).” This is (to my knowledge) the first time the US Intelligence Community has made a public claim that China has fielded a MIRVed missile system. If so, China joins the club of four other nuclear-armed states that have deployed MIRV for decades: Britain, France, Russia and the United States. For China to join the MIRV club strains China’s claim of having a minimum nuclear deterrent. It is another worrisome sign that China – like the other nuclear-armed states – are trapped in a dynamic technological nuclear arms competition. [Nuclear weapons] [China confrontation] [Military balance]
• China’s Perspective on Nuclear Deterrence
  Sr Col Yao Yunzhu, People’s Liberation Army of China My topic is about China’s perspective on deterrence, but before I deal with the topic, I must point out that for a long time in the Cold War, China strongly opposed the concept of nuclear deterrence, which, as so frequently used by the US government, had carried with it such derogatory connotations as “nuclear blackmail,” “nuclear coercion,” “nuclear containment,” and “nuclear threat.” And China, as the country most frequently threatened by nuclear attack,was understandably reluctant to use such a term.1 Not until the late 1980s or early 1990s, when China’s drive toward defense modernization inspired academic debate, did deterrence gain acceptance as a key concept in strategic studies and lose its pejorative sense. However, even though the term remained taboo for some time, the logic of deterrence has always played a major role in Chinese nuclear thinking. To facilitate understanding, I explain China’s nuclear policy, making use of US deterrence terminology, and compare China’s deterrence thinking with that of the United States. [Nuclear weapons] [China confrontation] [Military balance] [Deterrence] [No First Use]
• N.Korean Sub-Launched Missile 'Many Years Away'
  North Korea is "many years" away from being able to launch a submarine-launched ballistic missile yet, a senior U.S. military leader said. Adm. James Winnefeld, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday that the North Koreans "have not gotten as far as their clever video editors and spinmeisters would have us believe." North Korea made a show of test-launching a missile from a submarine earlier this month. Winnefeld was speaking at a seminar hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington But he added submarine-launched ballistic missiles could eventually present a "hard-to-detect" danger to Japan and South Korea and U.S. forces stationed there. The Defense Ministry here dismissed the possibility that the test-launch footage was doctored, saying both South Korea and U.S. intelligence agencies agree that the North succeeded in test-firing an SLBM. "We confirmed that an SLBM was launched from a submarine, soared out of the water, and flew about 150 m," a military spokesman said. [SLBM]
• Underwater Test-fire of Ballistic Missile Is Legitimate Exercise of Right to Self-defence: DPRK
  Pyongyang, May 20 (KCNA) -- The U.S. and Japanese reactionaries, south Korean puppet authorities and other hostile forces every day let loose invectives against the DPRK over its underwater test-fire of ballistic missile from a strategic submarine. In this regard a spokesman for the Policy Department of the National Defence Commission of the DPRK released a statement clarifying the principled stand of the service personnel and people of the DPRK on Wednesday. It cannot overlook the sinister aim sought by the hostile forces in taking issue with its legitimate measure to bolster up the self-defence capability as a sovereign state and their provocative behaviors, the statement said, and went on: The DPRK's underwater test-fire is part of the measures to increase the self-defence capability of its army and people, pursuant to the line of simultaneously developing the two fronts and a new higher level in the development of strategic striking means. It is long since the DPRK's nuclear striking means have entered the stage of producing smaller nukes and diversifying them. The DPRK has reached the stage of ensuring the highest precision and intelligence and best accuracy of not only medium- and short-range rockets but long-range ones. [SLBM]
• North Korea says it can miniaturize nuclear weapons
  By Jethro Mullen, CNN Updated 2307 GMT (0607 HKT) May 20, 2015 (CNN)—North Korea said Wednesday that it has the ability to miniaturize nuclear weapons, a key step toward building nuclear missiles. Analysts and U.S. officials have said previously that they suspected Kim Jong Un's regime was working toward accomplishing the technical feat, which is needed to fit a nuclear device on the tip of a ballistic missile. U.S. expresses doubt But on Wednesday, the official U.S. response was skepticism. "Our assessment of North Korea's nuclear capabilities has not changed," National Security Council spokesman Patrick Ventrell said in a statement. "We do not think that they have that capacity." "However, they are working on developing a number of long range missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, that could eventually threaten our allies and the homeland," the U.S. spokesman added. "That is why the Administration is working to improve regional and homeland missile defenses and continuing to work with the other members of the six-party talks to bring North Korea back into compliance with its nonproliferation commitments." The six-party talks refer to nuclear disarmament efforts by the United States, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia. But the North Korean assertion was unequivocal. "We have had the capability of miniaturizing nuclear warheads, as well as producing multiform weapons, for some time," the North Korean military said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency. "We can also guarantee the accuracy not only of short-to-mid-range but also long-range rocket launches, for which we have had the technology for a long time," the statement said. Claim echoes U.S. military assessments Despite the U.S.' official skepticism, Pyongyang's announcement about miniaturization -- the first time it has publicly made such a claim -- tallies with some recent assessments from senior U.S. military officials. [Nuclear weapons] [Miniaturisation]
• The Great 2010 DPRK Nuclear Test Debate: Summarizing the Evidence of a Low-Yield Nuclear Test Carried out in North Korea in May 2010
  By Lars-Erik De Geer 19 May 2015 Did they test or didn't they? The debate over whether North Korea conducted a low-yield nuclear test in May 2010 continues. On April 28, 2015 Jeffrey Lewis as well as Joel Wit and Sun Young Ahn posted on 38 North their negative (Lewis) and inconclusive (Wit and Ahn with some additional indications via satellite imagery) views on whether or not the North Koreans actually carried out a low-yield nuclear test in May 2010. As I started this debate with an article in Science & Global Security in late February 2012,[1] with its major message spread by Nature on February 3, 2012, I would like to correct a number of misunderstandings and maybe clarify a little bit more a story that might appear complicated for people not specialized in radionuclide analyses. My analysis was reinforced when new data appeared and when I also considered trapping of the xenon precursors antimony and tellurium in the analysis.[2] In this article, I will try to describe the evidence below starting from the strongest argument and continue through arguments that some people might consider doubtful, unless they manage to see the whole picture. [Test]
• Kyodo: North Korea could be preparing satellite launch for October
  Posted on : May.20,2015 16:36 KST Modified on : May.20,2015 16:36 KST Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite Launch later this year would mark 70th anniversary of KWP, and violate UN resolutions North Korean leader Kim Jong-un gave orders to prepare for a satellite launch on Oct. 10, the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Korean Workers‘ Party, a Japanese wire service reported. Quoting intelligence officials from the governments of “multiple countries,” Japan’s Kyodo News reported on May 18 that Kim Jong-un had personally instructed North Korea’s National Aerospace Development Administration (NADA) at the beginning of this year to prepare for a satellite launch. While Kyodo News did not specify which countries had provided this intelligence, the fact that the article in question was filed in Washington, D.C., suggests that one of them may have been the US. Since UN Security Council Resolutions 1718 and 1874 prohibit North Korea from firing missiles that rely on ballistic missile technology, the detection of preparations for launch or an actual launch of such a missile would have a considerable impact on the security environment on the Korean Peninsula. The last time that North Korea launched a satellite was in Dec. 2012. At the time, North Korea successfully launched the Eunha-3 rocket, which was carrying the Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite. Successfully putting a satellite into orbit means that North Korea possesses the fundamental technology to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile. In regard to this, the Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on May 3 that Kim Jong-un had made an on-site inspection of NADA’s newly constructed satellite control station. “The space research that we are conducting, as well as the development, launch, and control of practical satellites, is a completely justified autonomous right of a sovereign state,” a NADA spokesperson said in a statement released on May 8, five days later. “North Korea‘s autonomous satellite will shoot into deep space and continue to fly at the time and place requested and decided upon by the revolutionary leaders of North Korea,” the statement said. By Gil Yun-hyung, Tokyo correspondent [Satellite]
• North Korea says it has technology to make mini-nuclear weapons to mount on missiles
  By Daniela Deane May 20 at 4:03 AM ? North Korea said Wednesday it has the technology to make nuclear warheads small enough to be mounted on missiles, a day after a top U.S. military officer said the country was many years away from such an ability. A spokesman for Pyongyang’s powerful National Defense Commission said in a statement Wednesday that it will defend the country with such technology, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency. The North Korean report was carried by the South Korean news agency Yonhap, the country’s largest news agency. The statement said North Korea already had the technology required, but it did not make clear whether it had yet succeeded in making any such nuclear warheads, according to Yonhap. [Nuclear weapons]
• DPRK SLBM Test
  By Jeffrey | 13 May 2015 | 18 Comments Intelligence sources have told Bill Gertz at the Washington Free Beacon and Anthony Capaccio and Sam Kim at Bloomberg that North Korea tested its KN-11 submarine launched ballistic missile from a submersible barge, not a Sinpo-class submarine, and that the missile flew only a short period. Satellite images and open source information seems to support this account. It is important to note that this does not mean the test was a fake. This is a normal test to conduct in the early stages of an SLBM program — even if Rodong Sinmun and KCNA are exaggerating a bit. In fact, it would be strange if the North Koreans did not conduct such a test before moving to a full flight test. The United States and Soviet Union, as well as other states like India, all conducted such tests. Here are a picture and a schematic of a Soviet submersible barge known as PSD-4. One of my colleagues, Dave Schmerler, noticed something very interesting. Although all of the images released by Rodong Sinmun and KCNA were carefully cropped to give the impression that the launch was from a submarine, one of of the images in the larger set broadcast on television was not so carefully handled. One can see the ship used to tow what I presume is a submersible barge. I’ve stitched two images together so you can see what I mean. The presence of a surface ship so close to the ejection and launch basically rules out the possibility that the launch was from a submarine. [SLBM]
• Analyst claims North‘s underwater missile launch was from a barge
  Posted on : May.14,2015 16:31 KST Modified on : May.14,2015 16:31 KST Satellite images released by DigitalGlobe, through the website 38 North, of Sinpo Port on May 10 before the underwater launch of a missile. A barge was noticed at the port, which led analyst Joseph Bermudez to argue that the barge was used in the launch. The ballistic missile that North Korea recently claimed to have successfully launched was fired not from a submarine but rather from a submerged barge, according to one analyst. However, the South Korean Ministry of National Defense dismissed the claim, confirming that the missile was in fact launched from a submarine. “There is considerable reason to doubt North Korea’s announcement that it launched a missile from a submarine. It looks as if the missile was fired from a barge 10 meters wide and 22 meters long that was submerged about two or three meters below the surface,” said Joseph Bermudez, Jr., during a conference call with reporters that was organized on May 12 by 38 North, a website specializing in North Korea. Bermudez is a senior analyst at AllSource Analysis, a US firm that analyses commercial satellite imagery.
  “Military authorities concluded that North Korea conducted an ejection test of the missile from a Sinpo-class submarine. This conclusion is based not only on satellite imagery but also on other intelligence, including telephone conversations inside North Korea,” a senior official with the South Korean Defense Ministry said. “After successfully carrying out an ejection test on land last year, North Korea proceeded with ejection tests first from a barge and then from a submarine. May 8 was not the first ejection test from a submarine, either. After succeeding at a number of previous tests from a submarine, they carried out the test in front of Kim Jong-un,” the official said. [SLBM] [Intelligence]
• [Editorial] One dummy projectile isn’t reason to dance to North Korea’s tune
  Posted on : May.13,2015 17:37 KST Modified on : May.13,2015 17:37 KST A photo of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un observing the underwater launch of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, from the May 9 edition of the Rodong Sinmun newspaper. (Yonhap News) The ripples continue to spread after North Korea’s test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). On May 12, President Park Geun-hye held a meeting with foreign affairs and security ministers to review countermeasures. South Korean Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Choi Yoon-hee also met with Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of US Forces Korea, and is planning to discuss the issue when US Secretary of State John Kerry visits Seoul next week. It is important to soberly analyze trends in North Korea and to consider how to respond to them. Still, we are concerned by the tendency that some people have to read too much into North Korea’s actions. Failing to make a cool-headed assessment of the true nature and intention of North Korea’s military actions and making an impulsive and prejudiced response is not at all helpful to security. [SLBM]
• N. Korea's SLBM test conducted from barge, not from submarine: U.S. expert
  North Korea is believed to have conducted the recent test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile from a submerged barge, not from a submarine as claimed by the communist nation, a U.S. expert said Tuesday. Joseph Bermudez, a top North Korea military expert, also said the North appears to have "photoshopped" images of the test to exaggerate progress in its SLBM development, saying the photo released by Pyongyang shows no flame coming from the missile's engine when a "bright pink shadow" was reflected in the water. The assessment, disclosed during a discussion hosted by the website 38 North, suggests that the North has not made as much headway as previously feared in the development of submarine ballistic missiles, even though the regime is making progress. [SLBM]
• Updated : 2015-05-12 19:48 'Concerns over NK missile overblown'
  By Yi Whan-woo A group of international military analysts has played down North Korea's capability to deploy a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) in a year or two, saying concerns are overblown. They also raised questions about the credibility of the reclusive country's claim Saturday that it successfully test-fired a ballistic missile from underwater. "This is an emerging threat. It's still going to take years," Joseph Bermudez, a U.S. analyst on North Korean defense and intelligence affairs, was quoted as saying by the Korean-language edition of the Voice of America (VOA) online, Tuesday. A U.S. defense official agreed. "That was not a ballistic missile," the official, who asked not to be named, told AFP Monday. [SLBM]
• Underwater Test-fire of Korean-style Powerful Strategic Submarine Ballistic Missile
  By Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. 13 May 2015 The announcement on Saturday, May 9, 2015 by North Korea’s official news agency KCNA that the Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un had observed a “underwater test-fire of Korean-style powerful strategic submarine ballistic missile” has caused a great deal of speculation concerning the status of that nation’s submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM) program and its associated submarine development. Much of that speculation has implicitly accepted the North Korean position that the nation has advanced SLBM capabilities and that these capabilities are a threat capable of being employed against any potential enemies. 38 North has been following this issue since October 2014 when it first identified unique activity at the Sinpo South Naval Shipyard in North Korea and the launching of what appears to be an experimental submarine (tentatively identified as a SINPO-class submarine) designed to test an SLBM. A subsequent report in January 2015 updated and expanded upon those initial reports. The analytical conclusion of these reports was that North Korea was in the initial stages of developing a seaborne ballistic missile launch capability and that under optimal conditions this was an emerging regional threat rather than an imminent threat. It does not represent an emerging intercontinental threat. Using a combination of ongoing research, analysis of a May 10, 2015 DigitalGlobe commercial satellite image of the Sinpo South Naval Shipyard and the recent North Korean news releases, 38 North has reviewed its earlier analytical conclusions. This review concludes that: 1.The earlier assessment that North Korea was in the initial stages of developing a seaborne ballistic missile launch capability remains valid. 2.North Korea is expending significant resources to develop a SLBM capability. 3.The Sinpo South Naval Shipyard is continuing to be modernized, likely in preparation for a new submarine construction program. 4.North Korean camouflage, concealment and deception (CCD) efforts are in full effect and that there is an even chance that the recent SLBM test was conducted from a submerged launch platform rather than a submerged submarine. With regards to CCD, some of the imagery released by North Korea appears to have been altered. 5.The concurrent development of a new submarine-launched ballistic missile system and an associated ballistic missile capable submarine are within the upper limits of North Korea’s industrial and technical capabilities. 6.The earlier assessments that under optimal conditions North Korea possesses an emerging regional seaborne ballistic missile threat rather than an imminent threat and that it does not represent an emerging intercontinental threat, remain valid. [SLBM]
• US doubts NKorea underwater missile
  •12 May 2015 at 02:14 WASHINGTON - North Korea did not test fire a ballistic missile from a submarine as Pyongyang claimed over the weekend and the country is still a long way from achieving such a capability, US officials said Monday. Undated picture released from North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency on May 9, 2015 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un smiling while observing an underwater test-fire of a submarine-launched ballistic missile at an undisclosed location The North's state media said on Saturday that a new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) had been tested but US officials rejected the regime's account. "That was not a ballistic missile," a defense official told AFP. The official played down the test, saying it did not represent a technical breakthrough for the North. [SLBM] [Wishful thinking]
• North Korean SLBM Launch
  By Victor Cha May 11, 2015 On Friday, May 8, North Korea conducted an underwater test-fire of a submarine ballistic missile, displaying a new threat and growing missile capability. The next day, North Korea fired three ship-to-ship missiles from the city of Wonsan on the east coast into the sea. [SLBM]
• N.Korea's Sub-Launched Missile Sparks Arms Race Fears
  There was concern among pundits here Monday after North Korea launched a submarine-borne ballistic missile last week. One military source said the move could spark an underwater arms race in the region. China operates submarines as the core for its "anti-access/area denial strategy" aimed at preventing the U.S. military from increasing its influence in East Asia. Recently, it has deployed a new strategic nuclear-powered submarine carrying JL-2 ballistic missiles with a range of more than 8,000 km. Japan's submarine capability is also growing. It plans to augment its submarine force from four fleets (18 subs) to six fleets (22 subs). They are reportedly designed to monitor the East China Sea but could turn their attention to the East Sea if the North deploys its submarine-launched missiles warfare-ready. Russia, which has 64 submarines, deployed two 19,400-ton strategic nuclear-powered submarines at its Pacific Fleet in 2013 and 2014. South Korea is the sixth country in the world to launch a submarine command but a mere 13 U-boats. "The deep East Sea is a haven for subs from neighboring countries," a Navy officer here said. "We need to procure a large sub fleet given growing territorial disputes and military expansion in East Asia." [SLBM] [Arms race] [Pretext]
• [News analysis] Does N. Korea’s underwater missile poke a hole in Seoul’s missile defense network?
  Posted on : May.12,2015 16:01 KST Modified on : May.12,2015 16:01 KST South Korean missile defense against North Korean Sinpo-class submarines North Korea will be capable of integrating a submarine with ballistic missile carrying and launch capabilities as early as two or three years from now, it was predicted on May 11. The news had some in the ruling Saenuri Party (NFP) questioning whether the North’s successful test launch of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) means a full-scale reexamination of the missile defense system is in order. Meanwhile, the South Korean government cautioned against excessive security concerns, arguing that it can adjust the current missile defense building plan with the addition of radar and other military power. [SLBM] [Missile defense]
• Could North Korea’s underwater missile spark a submarine arms race?
  Posted on : May.12,2015 15:58 KST Modified on : May.12,2015 15:58 KST A photo of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un observing the underwater launch of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, from the May 9 edition of the Rodong Sinmun newspaper. (Yonhap News) Attention is focusing on whether North Korea’s successful ejection test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) will trigger competition between countries in Northeast Asia over their submarine fleets. Because submarines allow clandestine penetration of enemy waters, they are considered a reliable counterstrike method. During the Cold War, both the US and the Soviet Union regarded their nuclear-powered submarines, which were outfitted with strategic nuclear missiles, as a powerful form of retaliation, and the two countries maintained them as a key component of their nuclear strategies. [SLBM] [Submarines] [Military balance]
• Assessing North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Capability
  by Lee Chun-keun 11 May 2015 Lee Chun-keun writes that ‘North Korea, after decades of effort in its nuclear endeavor, has managed to develop its nuclear program using homegrown resources.’ He states that while North Korea’s ‘nuclear weapons program…lacks parts, resources and technology to support it, the country, based on its philosophy of self-reliance, has in part overcome these obstacles.’ In light of North Korea’s nuclear weapons development, Lee argues that ‘We need to initiate a much deeper study into the North’s nuclear-related technology.’ Lee Chun-keun is a researcher at the Science and Technology Policy Institute, South Korea. [Nuclear weapons]
• Korean A-Bomb Survivors of Hiroshima Speak Out at the United Nations
  May 10, 2015 The 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is meeting at the United Nations in New York from April 27 to May 22, 2015. The conference in which NPT member states “review the progress of the Treaty” towards achieving nonproliferation is hosted every five years by the United Nations. This year’s conference coincides with the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the 70th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese rule and the onset of its cold war division at the 38th parallel. Civil society groups from Korea and Japan also visited New York to speak at the NPT review conference and to participate in the Peace and Planet Conference, April 24- 25, a parallel conference of non-governmental organizations convened in part to call upon the NPT member states to immediately establish a timetable to ban all nuclear weapons. A new voice among those heard at both conferences was that of Korean survivors of the Hiroshima atomic bombings. [Nuclear weapons]
• N.Korea Test-Fires Ballistic Missile from Submarine
  A ballistic missile is launched from a submarine near Sinpo, South Hamgyeong Province on Friday, in this picture published by North Korea’s official Rodong Sinmun daily on Saturday. North Korean leader Kim Jung-un reportedly watched the launch on the spot. A ballistic missile is launched from a submarine near Sinpo, South Hamgyeong Province on Friday, in this picture published by North Korea’s official Rodong Sinmun daily on Saturday. North Korean leader Kim Jung-un reportedly watched the launch on the spot. North Korea test-fired a new ballistic missile from a submarine last Friday. South Korean and U.S. intelligence agencies judged the test successful. There are worries that once the missile is successfully developed, it would pose a great threat to South Korea’s missile defense. The North launched the missile from the vertical launch tube of a new 2,000-ton submarine from waters in the East Sea near Sinpo, South Hamgyong Province. It reportedly flew about 200 m and fell back into the water. The North has tested vertical launches of missiles in various locations since 2013 -- on the ground first, then at sea, then in the water. "The North is developing the submarine-launched ballistic missile faster than intelligence agencies expected," a military source here said. "It seems that it is speeding up efforts to complete it before the 70th anniversary of the Workers Party in October." [SLBM]
• N.Korea's New Missile Is a Nightmare Come True
  North Korea last week test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine, turning another nightmare into reality for South Korea. North Korea claimed it succeeded in launching the missile from the East Sea near Sinpo, South Hamgyong Province as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un looked on. Military experts believe the missile was carrying a dummy warhead, but North Korea apparently succeeded in getting the underwater missile to ignite as soon as it emerged from the ocean, while the projectile flew around 200 m. This shows the North is in the final stages of developing a submarine-launched ballistic missile. The only things left are to test an actual SLBM and to build a 3,000-ton submarine capable of launching it. South Korean and U.S. intelligence apparently spotted signs since last year that the North was developing an SLBM. [SLBM]
• [News analysis] Was North Korea’s underwater launch a missile or a dummy?
  Posted on : May.11,2015 16:34 KST Modified on : May.11,2015 16:34 KST A photo of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un observing the underwater launch of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, from the May 9 edition of the Rodong Sinmun newspaper. (Yonhap News) North Korea announced on May 9 that it had carried out a successful underwater test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile. While the US and South Korean militaries said the test was the ejection of a dummy projectile rather than the launch of a ballistic missile, it seems clear that North Korea is accelerating its development of strategic weapons that have stealth and mobility. The Rodong Sinmun and other North Korean media reported that “an underwater test launch was carried out of a powerful strategic submarine ballistic projectile that was completely developed by North Korea.” The newspapers printed photographs showing a ballistic missile printed with “Pole Star-1” shooting out of the water. If the North Korean claim is true, this could cause major changes in the security environment on the Korean Peninsula. First of all, South Korea would have to take measures to counter the possibility of North Korea penetrating South Korean waters with a submarine and launching a sneak attack by way of an underwater ballistic missile. [SLBM]
• Seoul downplays NK's missile claim
  Updated : 2015-05-11 17:37 By Kang Seung-woo The Defense Ministry downplayed Monday the significance of North Korea's claim that it successfully launched a ballistic missile from a submarine. "The North should first have the skills to produce miniaturized submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) warheads," spokesman Kim Min-seok told reporters. He also added that, if the repressive state posed a genuine clear and present danger to the United States, it first needs to master the technology related to re-entry warheads from an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM). Kim said that Pyongyang is four to five years away from full SLBM development. [SLBM]
• Tensions mount after DPRK fires missiles
  Xinhua, May 10, 2015 The DRRK test-fired ballistic and cruise missiles to the eastern coast of the Korean Peninsula. [Photo/Xinhua] Inter-Korean tensions escalated on Saturday as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) test- fired ballistic and cruise missiles to the eastern coast of the Korean Peninsula. The DPRK test-fired three ship-to-ship missiles for about an hour from 4:25 p.m. local time (0725 GMT) off its northeast coast, the South Korean military was quoted by local media as saying. Those were believed to be "KN-01" cruise missiles. Top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un oversaw firing of the missiles on Feb. 6. The test-firing came after DPRK issued warnings for two consecutive days of "direct aimed strikes without any prior notice " against any South Korean navy patrol ships, which Pyongyang accused of violating the disputed western sea border. [SLBM] [Cruise missiles] [Chinese IR]
• DPRK test-fires strategic ballistic missile
  Xinhua, May 9, 2015 The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has successfully test-fired a strategic ballistic missile from an underwater submarine, official news agency reported on Saturday. DPRK leader Kim Jong Un issued an order to begin the test-firing and watched the test, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The report did not mention the date of the test. [SLBM]
• North Korea says it has test-fired a missile from a submarine, a first
  By Anna Fifield May 8 at 10:23 PM ? TOKYO — North Korea said Saturday that it had successfully test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile from under the sea, which would mark a major advance in its military capabilities. Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, ordered the test of the “world-level strategic weapon” and was present when it “soared into the sky from underwater,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported. The Rodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece of the Korean Workers’ Party, separately ran photos that showed Kim on a boat holding binoculars as the rocket blasted out of the sea. North Korea had previously tested the KN-11 missile from platforms on land and at sea, but this appears to be the first time it has launched a rocket from under water. News of the launch came on the same day that Kim had been expected to make his first foreign appearance, at Russia’s World War II Victory Day celebrations in Moscow. But the Kremlin last week said Kim would not be attending because he had to take care of “internal matters.” Saturday’s photos show Kim instead flexing his military muscle at home, declaring the test an “eye­opening success.” The North Korean reports did not say when or where the test took place, or how far the missile flew. There was no independent confirmation of the reports. [SLBM]
• N.Korea Unveils New 'Satellite Facility'
  North Korean leader Kim Jong-un looks at rockets at a newly built satellite facility on Sunday, in this photo released by the Rodong Sinmun. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un looks at rockets at a newly built satellite facility on Sunday, in this photo released by the Rodong Sinmun. A purported satellite command center stands about 400 m from former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's residence in Pyongyang, satellite imagery suggests. Kim died in 2011. The imagery matches an aerial picture of the facility shown on the North Korean state TV on Sunday, while the residence is reportedly still sometimes used by current leader Kim Jong-un. The the official [North] Korean Central News Agency on Sunday claimed the regime built a facility that supervises rocket launches. "[North] Korea's satellites will soar into space as the party decides," Kim was quoted as saying during an inspection of the facility. The North has no satellites. Pundits worry that the North will launch another missile to mark the 70th anniversary of the Workers Party. In 2012 the isolated country launched a space rocket carrying what it claimed was a satellite, but the contraption was not functional and the launch was widely seen as a test of intercontinental missile technology. [Media] [Satellites]
• Securing Nuclear Safety in Northeast Asia: ROK Proposal on Northeast Asia Nuclear Safety Mechanism
  by Park Younwon 5 May 2015 Professor Park Younwon writes that given their ‘inevitable expansion of nuclear energy use’, Japan, Korea and China ‘ultimately share a common fate in terms of nuclear power, which is why the need for cooperation remains large. But other than the Top Regulators Meeting (TRM), talks on a cooperative organization among the three countries remains yet to be seen.’ [Nuclear safety]
• NK builds satellite control center
  North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has visited a new satellite control center, the regime's state-controlled Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Sunday. / Yonhap North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has visited a new satellite control center, the state-controlled media reported on Sunday. "We will never give up the space development projects, no matter what other hostile forces do," Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) quoted Kim as saying at the National Aerospace Development Administration. His remarks came amid mounting international pressure over the regime's violation of United Nations sanctions. In 2013, the U.N. imposed sanctions on the North for its missile launches and nuclear tests. The North has since stepped up its bellicose rhetoric against the West. The regime fired two Scud missiles from the east coast in March in its latest show of force. "We have achieved the status of a satellite developer and launcher with our own technology," Kim said. "Peaceful space development is a legitimate right (of our regime)." [Satellite]
• North Korean nuclear reactor may be operating again, say experts
  Institute for Science and International Security says there are signs that a centrifuge plant at the Yongbyon nuclear complex is active again Reuters Thursday 30 April 2015 02.51 BST Last modified on Thursday 30 April 2015 02.54 BST Satellite images taken between January and April show a North Korean nuclear reactor that can yield material for atomic bombs may be operating again at low power or intermittently, US experts said on Wednesday. A report from David Albright and Serena Kelleher-Vergantini at Washington’s Institute for Science and International Security said the imagery also suggested that a centrifuge plant at the Yongbyon nuclear complex had been operated and that North Korea may be preparing to conduct renovations at this plant. The ISIS think tank said last year that satellite imagery from late August and late September indicated the Yongbyon reactor may have been partially or completely shut down. [Yongbyon]

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APRIL 2015

• WSJ: Chinese expert estimates that N. Korea has 20 nuclear weapons
  Posted on : Apr.24,2015 15:42 KST Modified on : Apr.24,2015 15:42 KST A new long-distance ballistic missile was unveiled at Sunday’s military parade in Pyongyang. China believes North Korea’s arsenal of nuclear warheads is much larger than US estimates, making it very concerned, a newspaper report suggests. During a closed-door meeting of Chinese and American nuclear experts held in Beijing this past February, a senior Chinese nuclear expert estimated that North Korea currently holds 20 nuclear warheads and that it appears to have the enriched uranium needed to produce another 20 by 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported on Apr. 22, quoting a participant in the meeting. The meeting was hosted by the China Institute of International Studies, a research institute affiliated with the Chinese foreign ministry. It was attended by a number of Chinese political, diplomatic, and technical experts on North Korean nuclear weapons. Chinese experts believe that “the North Koreans have enough enriched uranium capacity to be able to make eight to 10 bombs’ worth of highly enriched uranium per year,” said Siegfried Hecker, an American nuclear expert and professor at Stanford University who was also in attendance. Chinese estimates of North Korea’s nuclear stockpile are much higher than US estimates. Until recently, US experts on North Korean nuclear weapons had believed that North Korea possessed from 10 to 16 warheads. Even Hecker had said before that North Korea had fewer than 12 bombs and that this number would not surpass 20 through next year. Reportedly, US government officials “expressed surprise” when they heard about what was said during the meeting. [Nuclear weapons] [Missile Defense] [Threat]
• Korea Ekes Out Small Gains in New Nuke Pact with U.S.
  Korea accepted partial defeat on Wednesday in a revised nuclear pact with the U.S. that does little to solve the problem of vast stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel piling up in storage here. The original agreement imposed back in 1973 prohibited Korea from enriching uranium and reprocessing spent fuel rods from its nuclear power plants. The revision only allows Korea to produce low-enriched uranium and start research on recycling spent nuclear fuel. But that does not mean Seoul can now start reprocessing its own fuel rods. [Nuclear fuel cycle] [US dominance]
• Korea Must Swallow Bitter Pill of Revised Nuke Pact
  After more than four years of negotiations, Seoul and Washington agreed on a revision of the nuclear pact dating back to 1973 that prohibits Korea from enriching uranium or processing its own spent nuclear fuel rods. The original pact has long troubled Korea because it has a bundle of obstacles to developing and exporting nuclear technologies. Today, Korea is the world's fifth-largest nuclear energy producer and operates 23 reactors. At the crux of the talks was a way of properly reflecting that reality. The U.S. has insisted on what is known as "gold standard" for nuclear pacts signed in recent years with Taiwan and the UAE, which imposes a permanent ban on uranium enrichment and plutonium extraction. The time it took for the revised pact to be negotiated demonstrates just how far apart Seoul and Washington were on key issues. [Nuclear fuel cycle] [US dominance]
• South Korea and US initial successor nuclear energy agreement
  Posted on : Apr.23,2015 16:09 KST Modified on : Apr.23,2015 16:09 KST South Korea’s ambassador to the AEA negotiations Park Ro-byug shakes hands with US Ambassador Mark Lippert after initialing a successor nuclear energy agreement, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Seoul, Apr. 22. (by Lee Jeong-woo, staff photographer) The Atomic Energy Agreement with the US that has served to regulate South Korea’s peaceful nuclear activities for the past 42 years has been renegotiated. The new terms still disallow independent uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing by South Korea. But they also open up the possibility of limited low enrichment of uranium and expand the scope of research on spent fuel pyroprocessing (dry reprocessing) in what can be seen as an expansion of South Korea’s nuclear autonomy. [Nuclear fuel cycle] [US dominance] [Liberal]
• Korea to gain wiggle room on nuclear policy
  Decades-old ROK-US agreement finally revised By Yi Whan-woo South Korea and the United States reached agreement for a revision of their nuclear cooperation deal, Wednesday, allowing Seoul to expand its commercial use of nuclear energy. Park Ro-byug, Seoul's Ambassador for Nuclear and Special Representative for the Republic of Korea (ROK)-U.S. Nuclear Cooperation, signed a provisional pact with U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert in Seoul. The 21-point deal will require final approval from both President Park Geun-hye and her U.S. counterpart Barack Obama to take effect. The agreement states that South Korea has the right to peaceful use of nuclear energy as signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. [Nuclear fuel cycle] [US dominance]
• US Breaching NPT by Deploying Nuclear Arms in European Countries – Lavrov
  US is compromising the Non-Proliferation Treaty by placing its tactical nuclear weapons in five European countries, Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday. MOSCOW, April 22 (Sputnik) – The United States is breaching the Non-Proliferation Treaty by placing its tactical nuclear weapons in the territories of five European countries, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday. "The Americans are breaching the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons because they have placed their tactical nuclear weapons in the territories of five countries in Europe," Lavrov said during an interview to Russian radio stations Sputnik, Ekho Moskvy, and Govorit Moskva. [NPT]
• Proposal: A Comprehensive Approach to a Northeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone
  Nagasaki University was a victim of the atomic bombing in August 1945 and founded the Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition (RECNA) three years ago. This proposal is written by the RECNA. The proposal will be submitted to concerned states and the international community and has been written with the sincerest of hopes that it serves as a proposal for policies so that Japan, being a victim of nuclear bombs, can contribute to realizing a nuclear weapon free world. [NWFZ]
• Russian nuclear forces, 2015
  1. Hans M. Kristensen 2. Robert S. Norris .full Abstract Russia is modernizing its strategic and nonstrategic nuclear warheads. It currently has 4,500 nuclear warheads, of which roughly 1,780 strategic warheads are deployed on missiles and at bomber bases. Another 700 strategic warheads are in storage along with roughly 2,000 nonstrategic warheads. Russia deploys an estimated 311 ICBMs that can carry approximately 1,050 warheads. It is in the process of retiring all Soviet-era ICBMs and replacing them with new systems, a project that according to Moscow is about halfway complete. The outgoing ICBMs will be replaced by the SS-27 Mod. 1 (Topol-M), the SS-27 Mod. 2, two follow-on versions of the SS-27 which are still in development, and a new liquid-fuel “heavy” ICBM. Following technical problems, the Russian Navy is also rolling out its new Borey-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. Russia’s upgrades to its nuclear arsenal help justify modernization programs in other nuclear weapon states, and raise questions about Russia's commitment to its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons. [Nuclear weapons] [Context]
• How Germany financed Israel’s nuclear weapons program
  Author: AT Editor April 13, 2015 1 Comment By Hans Rühle Israel’s nuclear weapons capability ceased to be a secret quite some time ago. Although Israel sticks to its rhetoric of “intentional ambiguity” and punishes any mention of its nuke program by its citizens as a criminal offense, most of its details have been exposed, except one: Who financed the program? That last Israeli nuclear secret is finally revealed: the country that financed Israel’s nuclear weapons program was with almost absolute certainty the Federal Republic of Germany. The recent explicit denial by Israel’s former President Shimon Peres does not invalidate this finding. Even Israeli top officials still remain obliged not to reveal anything about Israel’s nuclear weapons in general, and German-Israeli nuclear cooperation in particular. [Nuclear weapons] [Israel]
• NORAD commander: North Korean KN-08 missile operational
  By Jon Harper Stars and Stripes Published: April 7, 2015 bill gortney Adm. Bill Gortney, seen here at his Senate confirmation hearing in July, 2014, says he believes North Korea has an operational road-mobile missile that could carry nuclear weapons to the U.S. Joe Gromelski/Stars and Stripes USFK chief: North Korea has made crucial advance toward nuclear missile The commander of U.S. forces in Korea said Friday that he believes North Korea is capable of producing a miniaturized nuclear device, a necessary step toward nuclear missile capability. South Korea sends warships to watch for North missile fire South Korea deployed two warships Friday to watch for a possible North Korean missile launch, as Pyongyang reportedly began moving missile and launch equipment to its coast. North Korean threat fails to instill fear among US experts Hawaii, Guam and the U.S. mainland are in North Korea's sights for possible attack from weapons that have been placed on "the highest alert from this moment," the reclusive country warned Tuesday in its escalating war of words with the United States and South Korea. So how worried should people be in Hawaii? WASHINGTON — North Korea has an operational road-mobile missile that could carry nuclear weapons to the United States, according to the commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command. The KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile was first paraded in North Korea in 2012. Many analysts suspected at the time that the missiles on display were mock-ups and doubted that the country had actually developed the weapon. But on Tuesday, Adm. Bill Gortney, the head of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, told reporters at the Pentagon that he thinks Pyongyang has achieved a breakthrough. “We assess that it’s operational today, and so we practice to go against that,” he said. Gortney said North Korea has not yet tested the missile, and he declined to explain why he thinks the missile is ready to go. The U.S. military does not consider its weapons to be operational until they’ve been tested. [ICBM] [MISCOM] [Intelligence] [Missile defense] [Ploy]
• North Korea has '1,000 ballistic missiles' that can reach Japan and South Korea, study suggests
  But the hermit kingdom will need foreign help to create ranging missiles that could target the US Kashmira Gander Author Biography Wednesday 08 April 2015 North Korea is armed with hundreds of ballistic missiles which have the potential to hit neighbouring countries, researchers have warned. According to a US study investigating what the hermit kingdom's nuclear capabilities will look like by 2020, North Korea will need foreign technology in order to upgrade its arsenal and pose a direct threat to Washington. The nation’s aggressive rhetoric and periodic missile tests have made other nations in the region nervous, as negotiations to persuade it to disarm remain unlikely. Just last week, North Korea's military fired seven missiles into the sea as US and South Korean forces performed military exercises off its coastline, according to Seoul officials. The research was published by the North Korean Futures Project – a joint effort by the U.S.-Korea Institute at John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and National Defense University's Centre for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction. It concluded that North Korea’s inventory of around 1,000 missiles, based on old Soviet technology, can already reach most targets in South Korea and Japan.
• Korea’s Missile Technology
  NORAD Discusses North Korea’s Missile Technology Korea Chair Snapshot By Victor Cha Apr 8, 2015 NORAD Discusses North Korea’s Missile Technology Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command Adm. William Gortney’s press briefing at the Pentagon on April 7 addressed concerns on North Korea’s nuclear and missile program.
• N.Korea Declares No-Fly, No-Sail Zone
  North Korea is likely to fire more missiles after the regime declared the East Sea a no-fly, no-sail zone last Wednesday. The ban has been declared for an indefinite period and the North did not bother to inform any international agencies, a government source here said Monday. "We've also detected movement of some transporter erector launchers carrying Rodong missiles," another source said. Military authorities speculate that the regime will launch ballistic missiles as a show of force this week or next, when U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter visits Seoul on April 9-11, or on the birthday of regime founder Kim Il-sung (April 15). Last year, the North repeatedly fired missiles into the East Sea without even declaring a no-fly, no-sail zone.
• The Future of North Korean Nuclear Delivery Systems
  By 38 North 07 April 2015 The Future of North Korean Nuclear Delivery Systems Pyongyang’s inventory of delivery systems is a key factor in considering North Korea’s nuclear future. While its current inventory is well developed, although limited to old Soviet technology only able to reach regional targets, North Korea has bigger ambitions and is seriously pursuing the deployment of more capable, longer-range, more survivable weapons. However, the future of its nuclear delivery systems remains uncertain given technical, engineering and other challenges the North will have to face. This report details North Korea’s current missile program and provides low-end, medium and high-end scenarios for its future delivery systems capabilities. In developing these projections, a number of potential constraints are considered, including engineering and technical challenges, access to foreign assistance and the regime’s political and economic commitment to the modernization of its arsenal. Download the report, “The Future of North Korean Nuclear Delivery Systems,” by John Schilling and Henry Kan. [Nuclear weapons]
• North Korea developing ballistic missile capable of reaching U.S.
  North Korea’s advancements in deploying a long-range, intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, known as the KN-08, was highlighted in a testimony in James Clapper's address to Congress. By Elizabeth Shim | Updated March 30, 2015 at 1:42 PM James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, said North Korea is advancing in its development of a long-range ballistic missile. The KN-08 is believed to have a range of 7,460 miles WASHINGTON, March 30 (UPI) -- North Korea has taken additional steps in developing a long-range ballistic missile that could target the United States, National Intelligence Director James Clapper said. Clapper addressed Congress last week with the latest findings on North Korea's advancements in deploying a long-range, intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, known as the KN-08. The missile, said Clapper, is capable of reaching the United States. But because of its long range the KN-08 is not capable of attacking South Korea. [ICBM] [Military balance]
• U.S. Veterans Reveal 1962 Nuclear Close Call Dodged in Okinawa
  Mar. 31, 2015 Ota Masakatsu Introduction by Steve Rabson Ota Masakatsu’s horrifying account of an erroneous order to launch nuclear missiles in Okinawa during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 raises the possibility that, despite the U.S. military’s vehement denials, a nuclear war could start by accident. While much discussion has centered on the Cuban Missile Crisis spinning out of control into nuclear war, the latest revelations link 1950s Okinawa as yet another site in which the possession of U.S. nuclear weapons came close to bringing nuclear holocaust. Describing an earlier incident in Okinawa, veterans of the Nike-Hercules surface-to-air missile battery at Naha Airbase recalled an accidental firing during a circuits test in 1959, that was blamed on stray voltage. The missile left the launcher, smashed through a fence, and plunged down to the beach below where the warhead bounced out and skidded across the water “like a stone,” but did not detonate. The rocket blast killed two technicians and injured one. (“Nike History: Eyewitness Accounts of Timothy Ryan, Carl Durling and Charles Rudicil,” retrieved November 11, 2012, posted at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-14_Nike_Hercules) Robert S. Norris, William M. Arkin, and William Burr reported in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (November/December, 1999, pp. 26-35) that “Okinawa hosted 19 different types of nuclear weapons during the period 1954-1972.” The “secret agreement” accompanying the 1969 reversion pact between President Nixon and Prime Minister Sato identified nuclear weapons sites at “Kadena, Naha, Henoko, and Nike-Hercules units.” The agreement specified that the U.S. “requires standby retention and activation [of the sites] in time of great emergency.” While U.S. bases were scattered throughout Japan, it was only in Okinawa that nuclear weapons were stored and warheads mounted on rockets. This was one, and perhaps the most dangerous, way that the disproportionate burden carried by this small island prefecture, where two-thirds of the total U.S. military presence in the country remains, weighed so heavily. Along with the risk of “reactivation” is the troubling possibility of serious environmental hazards at former nuclear sites in Okinawa. These include the village of Henoko, now also threatened by the planned construction of a U.S. Marine airbase in the face of deep Okinawan opposition from the grassroots to the Governor. [Nuclear accident] [Okinawa]

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MARCH 2015

• Nuclear terrorism risks in Northeast Asia: Japan’s reactor restart and spent fuel
  NAPSNet Special Report by Peter Hayes 23 March 2015 I. SUMMARY In this report Peter Hayes examines the risk of nuclear terrorism in Northeast Asia with particular reference to Japan. He states that Japan is no more immune to nuclear terrorism than it was to a catastrophic reactor accident. In this context, the combination of safety and security concerns represented by spent fuel pools at reactors is a critical variable in the risk profile arising from the threat of nuclear terrorism. Japan’s choices have global significance for the threat of nuclear terrorism, and therefore demands serious consideration as part of a national and international risk-benefit assessment of the future evolution of nuclear power. [Nuclear terrorism]
• It’s Official: The Pentagon Finally Admitted That Israel Has Nuclear Weapons, Too
  William Greider on March 20, 2015 - 10:56 AM ET While the Washington press corps obsessed over Hillary Clinton’s e-mails at the State Department, reporters were missing a far more important story about government secrets. After five decades of pretending otherwise, the Pentagon has reluctantly confirmed that Israel does indeed possess nuclear bombs, as well as awesome weapons technology similar to America’s. Early last month the Department of Defense released a secret report done in 1987 by the Pentagon-funded Institute for Defense Analysis that essentially confirms the existence of Israel’s nukes. DOD was responding to a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by Grant Smith, an investigative reporter and author who heads the Institute for Research: Middle East Policy. Smith said he thinks this is the first time the US government has ever provided official recognition of the long-standing reality. It’s not exactly news. Policy elites and every president from LBJ to Obama have known that Israel has the bomb. But American authorities have cooperated in the secrecy and prohibited federal employees from sharing the truth with the people. When the White House reporter Helen Thomas asked the question of Barack Obama back in 2009, the president ducked. “With respect to nuclear weapons, you know, I don’t want to speculate,” Obama said. That was an awkward fib. Obama certainly knows better, and so do nearly two-thirds of the American people, according to opinion polls. In my previous blog, “What about Israel’s Nuclear Bomb?” I observed that the news media focused solely on Iran’s nuclear ambitions but generally failed to note that Israel already had nukes. That produced a tip about the Pentagon release in early February. [Israel] [Nuclear weapons] [Double standards]
• The Last Word
  By Joel S. Wit and David Albright 19 March 2015 Delivery Systems Projections: Three Nuclear Forces for 2020Any attempt to predict the future when it comes to North Korea is a risky but worthwhile business, worthwhile if only because of the lack of reasoned, balanced attempts to do so and the serious challenges posed by that country to international peace and security. Our recent report on North Korea’s nuclear future looking at three scenarios for its potential nuclear stockpile, delivery systems and nuclear strategy, while receiving an enormous amount of media attention, also provoked a certain amount of criticism. As the authors of the overview paper—and of the more detailed look at the future of Pyongyang’s nuclear stockpile—we would like to address those criticisms. Some of the criticism is easy to dismiss. The South Korean Ministry of Defense spokesperson dissed our reports finding that North Korea currently has 10-16 nuclear weapons as “simply a presumption without any evidence.” Well, we understand that governments probably have more evidence than we do, but one of us having worked in government, we can assure everyone they have less than they pretend to. Our estimate is based on the best publicly available evidence—extensive on Pyongyang’s plutonium stockpile—but less so on the North’s ability to produce weapons-grade uranium. That’s the reason why the estimate is 10-16 weapons, largely because of uncertainties about how many operating plants the North has—one or two. [Nuclear weapons] [Intelligence] [Threat]
• A comprehensive agreement for security in Northeast Asia
  by Morton Halperin 16 March 2015 Introduction In this Policy Forum Morton H. Halperin writes ‘A new approach is clearly needed to prevent the DPRK from testing and deploying its operational nuclear weapons capability and to persuade it to de-nuclearize.’ Halperin lays out a plan for achieving a comprehensive security agreement in Northeast Asia, ‘one that deals in a single treaty with all of the issues affecting the security of the Korean peninsula. The treaty would be signed by the six nations participating in the Six Party talks, the other two nuclear weapons states, and other states in the region. Included in the comprehensive agreement would be the de-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula by a formal treaty commitment to the creation of the Nuclear Weapons Free Zone.’ Morton H. Halperin is a senior advisor to the Open Society Foundations. An expert on foreign policy and civil liberties, he served in the Johnson, Nixon and Clinton administrations including Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State (1998-2001). This Policy Forum was initially presented at the Nautilus-CIIS Workshop on Comprehensive Security Settlement and DPRK Nuclear Issue, Beijing, January 23, 2014 [NWFZ] [US NK policy]
• Where’s That North Korean ICBM Everyone Was Talking About?
  By John Schilling 12 March 2015 The past year might seem to have been one of conspicuous inactivity in North Korea’s long-range rocket program. The last flight test was the December 2012 launch of an Unha-3 carrying North Korea’s first successful satellite. Since then we have seen only the usual Scuds and Nodongs and possibly an improved variant of the short-range, solid-fueled KN-02 “Toksa.” The Musudan and KN-08 missiles so proudly displayed in July 2013 have not been seen since, and neither has been flight tested. In short, one might be tempted to conclude that the regime has given up its pursuit of long-range weapons. But conspicuous inactivity can mask quiet activity, visible mainly to the sort of people who spend their hours scrutinizing satellite imagery of obscure corners of the DPRK. I’m not one of them, but I am on their mailing lists. And these observers have seen interesting developments lately. Possibly most significant in the near-term have been reports of the continuation of the rocket engine ground testing that has been underway at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station since 2012, if not before. There has also been significant infrastructure construction at that facility, including a recently modified gantry tower sized for a space launch vehicle (SLV) much larger than the Unha-3. Most recently, a potential test facility for a submarine missile launch system was identified, which, while certainly not suited for long-range rockets, indicates active exploration by the North of possible new launch platforms. It is worth emphasizing, however, that such a development is likely far in the future. [SLV] [ICBM]
• Korea to Send New Satellite into Space
  The homegrown Arirang-3A multipurpose satellite will be sent into space in the small hours of March 26. It will be launched from the Yasny launch base in Russia, according to the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning here Wednesday. The satellite will be carried by a three-stage Dnepr launch vehicle, a remodeled version of an intercontinental ballistic missile of the old Soviet Union. [Satellite]
• North Korea’s Nuclear and Rocket Test Sites: Limited Activity, No Tests Likely in the Near Future
  By 38 North 10 March 2015 A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Jack Liu and Nick Hansen. Despite recent tensions on the Korean peninsula over military exercises held by the United States and the Republic of Korea, commercial satellite imagery of North Korea’s Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site and the Sohae Satellite Launching Station indicate only activities associated with maintenance during the winter months are taking place. While both sites are likely at a sufficient state of readiness to move forward with a test if ordered to do so by the North Korean leadership, there are no signs of preparations. As a result, the North is unlikely to conduct a nuclear or missile test over the next few months. [Test]
• NK pilot believed to die in 2009 rocket launch
  By Jun Ji-hye North Korea has paid tribute to 14 of its military personnel who were involved with the launch of a satellite in 2009, including one Air Force pilot who died. According to the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) Tuesday, the country's leader Kim Jong-un inspected Unit 447 of the Air and Anti-Air Force and was pictured in front of a monument to honor the "14 stalwart fighters who displayed great bravery." The KCNA added that the monument honors the "heroic feats performed by the military to ensure the successful launch of the Kwangmyongsong-2 satellite." Following the report, some South Korean vernacular media reported that 14 people appear to have died during the operation. However, officials noted that only one pilot is believed to have been killed. This is thought to have occurred on April 4, 2009, a day before the rocket launch, while he was on a reconnaissance flight close to the launch site scouting for possible interceptions. [Satellite]
• Pakistan Could Soon Have More Nukes Than the U.K. and France
  And smaller and more destabilizing ones, too
  by Chris Biggers Pakistan has one of the fastest growing nuclear stockpiles in the world. Islamabad refuses to release any information regarding its nuclear stockpile, but open sources suggest it possesses as many as 120 atomic warheads. And lately, Pakistan has been working hard to shrink the warheads’ size and fit them on smaller, more flexible tactical missiles. That effort has some sobering implications. A satellite image from January 2014 seems to indicate that Pakistan’s National Defense Complex has finished fitting out of two additional Hatf-7 Babur cruise missile launchers, one of the few non-strategic nuke systems that Pakistan could deploy against an attacking Indian army. The 350-kilometer-range Babur, which debuted in 2005, is Pakistan’s first land-attack cruise missile. There’s also an air-launched version. The more recent Nasr, a surface-to-surface missile system with a 60-kilometer range, first appeared in 2011. Both platforms are highly mobile and sport technology that many analysts believe originated in China. We don’t know how many of each system Pakistan’s NDC has produced, but continuing production underscores Islamabad’s intention to deploy nukes to counter India’s conventional forces. [Nuclear weapons] [Pakistan]
• How Many Nukes Will N.Korea Have 5 Years from Now?
  North Korea could build up to 100 nuclear weapons by 2020 if development continues at the current pace, an expert speculates. Joel Wit of the website 38 North at Johns Hopkins University on Tuesday gave a seminar in Washington on the North’s potential development of nuclear weapons. Wit presented three scenarios -- minimal, moderate and fast growth. [Nuclear weapons] [Unification]
• N.Korea Resumes Tests for Smaller Missile Warheads
  North Korea has resumed high-explosive tests believed to be aimed at making smaller and more powerful warheads for ballistic missiles, a government source said Wednesday. The North conducted no fewer than 139 high-explosive tests between the early 1980s until 2002. Intelligence officials here believe North Korea's next nuclear test will produce a yield of at least 10 to 15 kilotons. That would be similar in power to the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. The last nuclear test in 2013 produced an estimated yield of 6 to 7 kilotons. But the government source added there are no signs that the North is preparing for a nuclear test at the site in Punggye-ri, North Hamgyong Province. [Test]
• North Korea’s Nuclear Futures Project: Technology and Strategy
  By 38 North 26 February 2015 THE NORTH KOREA’S NUCLEAR FUTURES PROJECTSince the end of the Korean War, the United States has grappled with the security challenge posed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. An increasingly important component of that challenge has been North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Pyongyang’s quest has stretched out over decades, representing an enormous investment of manpower, resources and money totaling billions of dollars. While the international community is generally aware of Pyongyang’s programs, largely through the North’s sporadic conduct of nuclear weapons and long-range rocket tests, little recent attention has been focused on the very significant dangers posed by this effort. The international community and media are focused on heading off Iran’s small nuclear weapons program rather than on the disturbing developments on the Korean peninsula. Another reason for the lack of serious attention is the still prevailing view of North Korea as a starving, backwards and isolated country led by a young inexperienced and somewhat comical dictator. That perception was, to some degree, offset by the recent North Korean cyber-attack on Sony Pictures. [Nuclear weapons] [US NK policy]
• Future Directions in the DPRK’s Nuclear Weapons Program: Three Scenarios for 2020
  By 38 North 26 February 2015 Future Directions in the DPRK’s Nuclear Weapons Program: Three Scenarios for 2020Like many secret nuclear weapons programs, the DPRK goes to great lengths to hide its capabilities to produce nuclear explosive materials and nuclear weapons. Despite these actions, a picture can be drawn of North Korea’s current and projected plutonium and weapons-grade uranium (WGU) stocks. Knowing these plutonium and WGU stocks can, in turn, allow an estimate of the DPRK’s current number of nuclear weapons and a range of projections of the number North Korea could build in the next several years. Although great uncertainty surrounds these projections, as well as the quality of North Korea’s nuclear weapons, these projections form a reasonable picture of the DPRK’s possible nuclear weapons futures, absent actions to significantly limit its nuclear programs. [Nuclear weapons]

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FEBRUARY 2015

• Nuclear command-and-control in the millenials era
  by Peter Hayes 17 February, 2015 I. SUMMARY In this report Peter Hayes writes about the risk of nuclear war and complexity. He states that “very few leaders or even strategic scholars pay attention to the new complexity of the operating environment in which national nuclear command-and-control systems operate, or the new characteristics of the command-and-control systems and their supporting CISR systems that may contribute to the problem of loss-of-control and rapid escalation to nuclear war. “Today, the underlying ground is moving beneath the feet of nuclear-armed states. The enormous flow across borders of people, containers, and information, and the growth of connectivity between cities, corporations, and communities across borders, is recasting the essential nature of security itself to a networked flux of events and circumstances that no agency or state can control. The meta-system of nuclear command-and control systems has emerged in this new post-modern human condition.” [Nuclear weapons]
• Obama Plays Hardball with Israel?
  By Mark H. Gaffney Finally. After many years of official hypocrisy, a US president appears to be playing hardball with Israel. The other day, the US government declassified a 1987 report documenting Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program. http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/02/12/nuc%20report.pdf I have been a critic of President Obama, but one has to admire the timing of the release which I suspect was ordered by the White House. Next month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to speak before Congress, at the behest of House speaker Boehner, and the topic of Netanyahu’s address reportedly will be Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. The fact that neither Speaker Boehner nor the Israeli government first cleared the speech with the White House has become controversial, and for good reason. Several prominent members of Congress, among them Senator Leahy, have already indicated they will boycott the speech, which will be a transparent attempt at an end run around the president. [Nuclear weapons] [Israel] [Proliferation]
• US helped Israel with H-bomb - 1980s report declassified
  Published time: February 13, 2015 20:22 Edited time: February 15, 2015 06:19 Conceding to a federal lawsuit, the US government agreed to release a 1987 Defense Department report detailing US assistance to Israel in its development of a hydrogen bomb, which skirted international standards. The 386-page report, “Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations,” likens top Israeli nuclear facilities to the Los Alamos and Oak Ridge National Laboratories that were key in the development of US nuclear weaponry. Israelis are "developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level,” said the report, the release of which comes before Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's March 3 speech in front of the US Congress in which he will oppose any deal that allows Iran's legal nuclear program to persist. "I am struck by the degree of cooperation on specialized war making devices between Israel and the US," Roger Mattson, a formerly of the Atomic Energy Commission’s technical staff, said of the report, according to Courthouse News. [Nuclear weapons] [Israel] [Proliferation]
• US-China Need a Missile Launch Notification Deal
  The United States and China should establish an advance launch notification agreement for long-range missile systems. By Nicholas Cosmas, Meicen Sun, and John K. Warden October 27, 2014 In his July call with Chinese President Xi Jinping, U.S. President Barack Obama again called for an improved U.S.-China relationship defined by “increased practical cooperation and constructive management of differences.” But between territorial issues, cyber espionage, air-to-air standoffs, and countless other flare ups, there are few reasons to be optimistic about U.S.-China relations in the short or medium-term. One area where progress has been particularly slow is the strategic relationship. Throughout the Obama administration, Washington has called for an official, Track-I discussion centered on nuclear weapons and strategic capabilities—to include nuclear weapon posture, missile defense, and long-range conventional strike—but Beijing has declined. Chinese interlocutors maintain that China, as the weaker power, has not reached the point where such discussions with the United States are appropriate. [Missiles] [ICBM]
• India tests canisterised Agni-5 ICBM successfully
  By Staff Correspondent Published: January 2015 New Delhi. Indian scientists conducted the third test of Agni-5 Inter Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) Jan 31, but this time directly from its mobile canister. The 17-metre 5000 km-plus range missile was launched from a military test facility in the Inner Wheeler Island launch site on India’s India’s east coast from a road mobile vehicle and still and video shots of the missile zooming up were released by DRDO to the media and public. DRDO, or Defence Research and Development Organisation, has been in charge of India’s missile programme since 1983, and its Director General Dr Avinash Chander, has been the driving force behind the long range missile programme. The unarmed missile landed some 5500 km away at a predetermined place in southern Indian Ocean. Its 20 minute flight was tracked throughout and Indian Navy ships monitored the splashdown. All the radars and electro-optical systems along the path monitored all the parameters of the Missile and displayed in real time. Incidentally, Dr Chander was fired a couple of weeks back and as Jan 31 was his last day in office, the test turned out to be his parting shot, or what his colleagues called a proud sayonara to the organization he joined some 40 years ago as a young scientist from one of India’s famed IITs. Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated DRDO scientists while National Security Advisor Ajit Doval conveyed similar sentiments to Dr Chander and his team. [Missiles] [ICBM]
• Chinese military conducts full test of long-range missile 'which can hit any part of US'
  PUBLISHED : Saturday, 20 December, 2014, 3:22am UPDATED : Saturday, 20 December, 2014, 3:03pm Minnie Chan minnie.chan@scmp.com China last week launched its most comprehensive test of its latest-generation intercontinental ballistic missile, the DF-41, which can hit anywhere in the US, according to an American media website. A successful test would mean China had made a significant advance in its nuclear capabilities, with far-reaching consequences for Washington's balance of weapons power in the Asia-Pacific, a defence policy expert said. [Missile] [ICBM] [MIRV]
• Night set alight as Russian sub test-launches Bulava missile (video)
  Published time: November 29, 2014 09:18 Russia’s second Borey-class nuclear submarine test-fired a strategic Bulava intercontinental missile. The night blast-off from a submerged boat was the first successful SLBM launch for the Aleksandr Nevsky. The K-550 Aleksandr Nevsky is the second Borey-class submarine, the new generation of boats carrying Bulava nuclear missiles. It has undergone modifications based on trials of the head submarine of the class, the Yury Dolgoruky, so its capability to fire the designated weapon is of paramount interest to the Russian Navy. The missile was fired from a submerged submarine on Saturday morning from the Barents Sea, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported. The missile’s warheads reached the Kura test range in Kamchatka in the Far East. [Missiles] [ICBM]
• Trident II D5 Missile Reaches 150 Successful Test Flights
  Navy Test-fires Submarine-launched Missiles Built by Lockheed Martin SUNNYVALE, Calif., June 4, 2014 – The U.S. Navy’s Trident II D5 Fleet Ballistic Missile, built by Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT], has achieved 150 successful test flights, setting a new reliability record for large ballistic missiles. The Navy launched two unarmed missiles June 2 in the Atlantic Ocean from a submerged Ohio-class submarine, marking the 149th and 150th successful test flights of the missile since design completion in 1989. The test flights were part of a demonstration and shakedown operation, which the Navy uses to certify a submarine for deployment following an overhaul. The missiles were converted into test configurations with kits containing range safety devices and flight telemetry instrumentation. [Missiles] [ICBM] [SBLM]
• Northrop Grumman Supports US Air Force Minuteman Missile Test Launch
  HERNDON, Va., Nov. 25, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) recently supported the successful flight testing of the U.S. Air Force's Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) weapon system. The operational flight test was conducted as part of the Air Force Global Strike Command's Force Development Evaluation Program. This program demonstrates and supports assessment of the accuracy, availability and reliability of the Minuteman III weapon system. The launch proceeded after a four-hour hold for down-range weather. The missile traveled approximately 4,800 miles in 30 minutes from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, to the Ronald Reagan Test Site in the Kwajalein Atoll in the western chain of the Marshall Islands. [Missiles] [ICBM]
• The Real Danger in Nuclear Modernization
  The true risks in modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal are misunderstood.
  By Adam Mount February 09, 2015 Russia and China are modernizing their nuclear arsenals and the U.S. is not. The line is so dramatic and so alarming that commentators have found it useful in justifying all sorts of expansions of U.S. nuclear policy, including more extensive modernization plans, new nuclear weapons, and assertive revisions of nuclear strategy. If these steps are not taken, the most powerful country in the world could find itself subject to coercion, its allies bullied, falling behind its adversaries. This thinking is mistaken on three counts. First, the United States is modernizing its nuclear forces. Second, the U.S. nuclear triad is markedly superior to the Chinese and Russian arsenals. Most importantly, the real danger to strategic stability may not be the U.S. falling behind the modernization of other countries but in racing aggressively ahead. [Nuclear weapons] [Military balance]
• Nuclear Weapons Treaty at a Crossroads
  6 February 2015 Jayantha Dhanapala and Sergio Duarte The Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is a lynchpin of international peace and security. Yet it is often taken for granted and its parties remain divided over its key requirements. In April, the United Nations will host a critical “review conference” to assess the treaty and its future. We, past Presidents of two previous review conferences, wish to voice our strong support for a successful outcome at that event, which is needed to bring us all closer to a world without nuclear weapons. [NPT]
• North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons: The Great Miniaturization Debate
  By Jeffrey Lewis 05 February 2015 The great debate over North Korea's miniaturization capabilities continues. On December 20, 2014, the South Korean Ministry of National Defense (MND) released a white paper that contained a surprising statement about North Korea’s nuclear program.[1] “North Korea seems to have made significant progress in miniaturizing its nuclear weapons.” The MND Minister had made a similar statement in October, but for some reason, this time his statement sparked a flurry of stories in South Korean press, such as the Chosun Ilbo and JoongAng Ilbo, as well as in US publications like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. This chatter forced the South Korean government to clarify the statement. “Seoul and Washington have reached consensus that the North already reached a significant level of technology to miniaturize nuclear weapons through three nuclear tests,” an MND official told the Chosun Ilbo. “But there is no intelligence report that the North has already succeeded in miniaturizing nuclear weapons.” Well that clears it up. This is now the third time something like this has happened in the past few years—a statement that North Korea has developed a nuclear weapon small enough to arm a ballistic missile of one sort or another, followed by oddly parsed statements suggesting that maybe they haven’t. [Nuclear weapons] [Intelligence] [MISCOM]
• Former Israeli Nuclear Head: No Iran Bomb for Ten Years—If They Even Want It
  A statement highlights the Netanyahu government's tenuous position. Trita Parsi The former head of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission Brigadier General (res.) Uzi Eilam just dropped a bombshell (no pun intended): "The Iranian nuclear program will only be operational in another 10 years," he told the Israeli paper Yediot Ahronoth. "Even so, I am not sure that Iran wants the bomb." And he added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is employing needless fearmongering about Iran's atomic aspirations in order to further his own political aims. May 8, 2014 Mindful of the ongoing—and thus far successful—nuclear talks with Iran, and Netanyahu’s vocal opposition to them, Eilam’s statement must be music to the ears of the Obama administration. It further embarrasses those in Washington who so uncritically swallowed Netanyahu’s talking points hook, line and sinker—and repeated the Israeli prime minister’s arguments as their own. But when such an Israeli authority as Eilam publicly tears apart the official Israeli narrative about Iran’s nuclear intentions, one must ask oneself why such a unfounded narrative—in the words of Netanyahu himself, “It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs”—ever gained foot in the first place. [Iran] [Nuclear weapons] [Netanyahu] [Disinformation] [Threshold]

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JANUARY 2015

• North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Facility: Restart of the 5 MWe Reactor?
  By 38 North 28 January 2015 A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Nick Hansen Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates new activity at the 5 MWe Plutonium Production Reactor at North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center after an almost five-month hiatus in operations from late August until mid-December 2014. One possibility is that the North is in the early stages of an effort to restart the reactor. However, since the facility has been recently observed over a period of only a few weeks, it remains too soon to reach a definitive conclusion on this and also on whether that effort is moving forward or encountering problems. Continuing to monitor the reactor site should provide more information in the future.
• Lingering impact of British nuclear tests in the Australian outback
  It seems remarkable today but less than 60 years ago, Britain was exploding nuclear bombs in the middle of Australia. In the mid-1950s, seven bombs were tested at Maralinga in the south-west Australian outback. The combined force of the weapons doubled that of the bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War Two. In archive video footage, British and Australian soldiers can be seen looking on, wearing short sleeves and shorts and doing little to protect themselves other than turning their backs and covering their eyes with their hands. Some reported the flashes of the blasts being so bright that they could see the bones of their fingers, like x-rays as they pressed against their faces. A cloud hangs over Australia's Monte Bello Islands after Britain tested its first atomic bomb Much has been written about the health problems suffered by the servicemen as a result of radiation poisoning. Far less well-documented is the plight of the Aboriginal people who were living close to Maralinga at the time. [Test]
• North Korea’s Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site: No Sign of Test Preparations
  By 38 North 16 January 2015 A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Jack Liu and Nick Hansen Summary Despite new speculation about the possibility of a fourth North Korean nuclear test, recent commercial satellite imagery of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site show no signs of preparations for another detonation. As a result, a fourth nuclear test seems unlikely in the near-term, for at least the next two to three months. However, it is quite possible that one or more tunnels at the facility are sufficiently complete to be readied for another nuclear test should Pyongyang make the political decision to move forward. Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site Assessment Commercial satellite imagery from January 1 and January 11, 2015 indicate a low level of activity at the nuclear test facility’s main areas. [Test]
• N.Korean Missile Launches 'Harder to Predict'
  North Korea has drastically shortened the time it takes to prepare for missile launches by improving liquid fuel quality for ballistic missiles, a government source here claimed Monday. This could virtually incapacitate South Korea's current missile defense system. "It used to be thought possible to detect a North Korean launch of ballistic missiles in advance because the liquid fuel had to be pumped into the missiles right before the launch," the source said. "But analysis of various intelligence reports last year shows that the North's ballistic missiles can now stay in standby mode for a long time even after they are injected with liquid fuel because its quality has improved." That would give the renegade country more flexibility in deciding when to launch a missile. The North is estimated to have some 1,000 ballistic missiles, most of which use liquid fuel. In the past the North's liquid fuel was so explosive that missiles could only be filled an hour-and-a-half to three hours before their launch. But now they can be kept ready for anywhere between a month and several years, the source claimed. That would make it nearly impossible for South Korean and U.S. intelligence to spot launch preparations with reconnaissance satellites or aircraft. Military authorities here failed to detect the North's surprise launches of Scud and Rodong missiles in advance last year. They are now trying to improve their reconnaissance and responses. [Missiles]
• N.Korea 'Making Progress Toward Nuclear Warheads'
  Seoul claims North Korea has refined technology to miniaturize nuclear weapons so they can be mounted on ballistic missiles that threaten the U.S. mainland. The claim comes in the 2014 Defense White Paper the Defense Ministry here published on Tuesday. This was the first time the ministry has made the claim in such an emphatic form, although it admitted there are a lot of provisos. The 2012 Defense White Paper merely mentioned the North's two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, but did not offer any evaluation of the technology to produce viable warheads for missiles. This year's white paper used the term "North Korea's nuclear weapons" for the first time, since there has long been a polite fiction that the North is not officially a nuclear-armed state. [Nuclear weapons] [Intelligence]
• Ending a Nuclear Threat via a Northeast Asia Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone
  Peter Hayes Nautilus Institute NAPSNet Special Report January 6, 2015 This special report was first presented at the Nuclear Free Korea and Northeast Asia Conference, Kim Dae-jung Presidential Library, December 10, 2014, Seoul. I. Summary This background paper sketches how nuclear threat is woven into inter-state relations in the Northeast Asian region, and the case for reducing and ending such threats against non-nuclear weapons states (hereafter NNWSs). It then outlines how a regional nuclear weapons-free zone could bring about an end to such nuclear threats, and describes how the DPRK’s active participation might be an integral part of such a zone from the outset. The paper also addresses the central issue of nuclear extended deterrence in the region, and suggests that it is possible to square the circle—that is, to end nuclear threats by nuclear weapons states (hereafter NWSs) in the region against NNWSs by creating a NWFZ—but maintaining strategic deterrence between the NWS should one of them threaten to use or attack a NNWS party to the zone, or should a NNWS party to the treaty break out and proliferate nuclear weapons. Finally, the paper argues that it is the interests of all states in the region to create a NWFZ because all of them are subject to nuclear threat today; and, it is the only way whereby they can create a stabilizing framework within which to manage, reduce, and eventually abolish nuclear threat in Northeast Asia, including those aimed at and coming from the DPRK. [NWFZ] [US NK policy]

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