U.S. Undersecretary of State Tom DiNanno accused China of conducting decoupled, low-yield nuclear tests including on June 22, 2020.  Aaron and Jeffrey talk about seismic monitoring of nuclear tests, the role of hydronuclear testing, and what might be going on.    Support us over at Patreon.com/acwpodcast!

The New START treaty has expired leaving the US and Russia without a bilateral limit on offensive strategic arms for the first time in decades. There is reportedly a handshake deal not to do anything drastic for six months while the two sides talk about the outlines of a future deal, but there seems to be little agreement about what such a deal might look like.  Aaron and Jeffrey discuss the end of New START, the prospects for and constraints on a looming arms race, and why even bother with arms control treaties at all.

 

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The Trump administration appears to be willing to return to the JCPOA, so long as you do not call it the JCPOA. Aaron and Jeffrey sat down to discuss the latest back and forth with Iran and what's at stake with the return to nuclear negotiations.

Watch the video pod over on YouTube!

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Aaron and Jeffrey sat down for their first video podcast to discuss the cost of Brilliant Swarm, the name du moment of Brilliant Pebbles, aka space based missile defense. 

Watch the video pod over on YouTube!

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Aaron and Jeffrey sat down to discuss the latest news about anti-satellite warfare and why bumping and grinding in the cosmos is back en vogue.

 

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Donald Tusk — not the indulgent follow up to the perfect Fleetwood Mac Album Rumours — mused recently about the future of deterrence in Europe. The discussion reminds of the challenges of extended deterrence, the oh so very French debate about nuclear weapons and European security, and the vibe shift that has raised questions about the future US security guarantee.

Links of Note:

Building a Euro Deterrent: Easier Said Than Done, by Pranay Vaddi and Vipin Narang

https://open.substack.com/pub/strategicsimplicity/p/building-a-euro-deterrent-easier?r=1l9z0c&utm_medium=ios

 

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Russia launched an experimental, offensive missile into Ukraine, aimed at the PA Pivdenmash (former Yuzhmash) factory. This is a new world of missile combat, as this looks to be the first use of an IRBM (though not at IRBM ranges) and possibly MIRV (though conventional!) in combat. 

Jeffrey and Aaron talk about Russia's new Oreshnik missile, what it is, its relationship to the RS-26 Rubezh IRBM/ICBM/treaty-skirting missile, the Typhon-Oreshnik European strike dyad, and the looming new Euromissile crisis. 

 

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The legendary Fred Kaplan joins Jeffrey to talk about his brand new novel, A Capital Calamity. 

Fred and Jeffrey talk through the Fred's experiences in nuclear strategy and the influences on his new novel, A Capital Calamity, from JFK's EXCOMM tapes, the MX basing debate, and the Jane Austen meets Dr. Strangelove comedy of DC manners and etiquette. 

Catch one of Fred's upcoming book readings for A Capital Calamity in DC and NYC, at the Union Market Politics & Prose on Saturday, October 26th and at Community Bookstore, Park Slope, Brooklyn, on Tuesday, October 29th.  

Fred Kaplan is a national security columnist for Slate. Former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for Boston Globe. Author of 7 books, including The Bomb, The Wizards of Armageddon, The Insurgents (Pulitzer Prize finalist), and now, his first novel, A Capital Calamity.

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An absolutely massive mobile ballistic missile was paraded in North....

...wait sorry....

South Korea. Force of habit. 

 

Decker joins Jeffrey to talk about the absolute unit that the ROK just showed off. But don't worry, it's just an "SRBM with an eight ton warhead," nothing to see here. The team talks about messaging, move/countermoves on the Korean Peninsula, and who actually started this dang missile race to begin with. 

Audio Originally Recorded October 2nd.

 

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China tested an ICBM deep into the Pacific Ocean, instead of short-shooting it into PRC deserts. 

Decker Eveleth joins Jeffrey to talk about why this is a fascinating change in behavior for the PLA Rocket Force and PRC in general. China has only ever done this twice before, both over 40 years ago, back in 1980. Decker and Jeffrey talk about the internally signalling mechanisms, the issues with corruption in the PLARF, China's potential move to US and Russian style ICBM test notifications, strategic stability, and our favorite: absolutely gorgeous high-resolution photos of solid-fuel ICBMs.

 

Audio Originally Recorded September 27th

 

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Iran just launched what may be the largest single missile raid in history, and Israel claims no Israeli deaths.

While we're still very early in the news cycle, Jeffrey and Aaron start picking apart the information available to look at what we can learn about the state of the Iranian offensive missile arsenal, weight what Iran's options for next steps are, and dive into the internal nuclear politics of both Israel and Iran.

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Friend of the Pod Decker Eveleth found the Burevestnik deployment site, it seems!

Decker, of the CNA Corporation, has tracked down what appears to be the deployment site of the 9M730 Burevestnik, aka the SSC-X-9 Skyfall, using Planet Labs satellite imagery. It appears to be about 300 miles north of Mosco, near a national-level nuclear storage facility. 

Decker and Jeffrey talk through Decker's methodology for identifying the storage facility, why Russia may deploy such a dangerous system so close to major cities, and the bureaucratic politics that could be driving the development of this bizarre weapon. 

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Russia has deployed the Oreshnik system in Belarus and then, from Russia, conducted another Oreshnik test.  Jefffrey and Aaron discuss how the open source team found the deployment site in Belarus before Russia announced it, what they think Oreshnik is, and how Russia managed to violate two arms control treaties with one missile.

 

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Jeffrey and his team have been OSINT'ing the heck out of the deployment of the Typhon Strategic Mid-Range Fires (SMRF) ((Typhon Smurf?)) to the Philippines, and tracked down the airport and deployment zone.

Recently the U.S. Army deployed the new Typhon SMRF system to the Philippines as part of an exercise, raising the ire of both the Russian and Chinese governments. The Army seemed to try and keep it relatively low profile initially but the Philippines just....tweeted it out basically. 

As the Pacific continues to bristle with missiles, Jeffrey and Aaron talk about regional escalation dynamics, who is buying what missiles, and who they are (or aren't?) actually pointed at...

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Tom Schelling described escalation as a "curved slope" where you won't be able to predict when the final drop occurs, and Ukraine targeting an early warning radar in Russia certainly is at least a few steps down that slop.

Jeffrey and Aaron sit down at the intersection of "legitimate conventional military target" and "direct cause of nuclear escalation" to talk about the risks and justifications for bringing EW systems into a conflict, and discuss James Acton's idea of modern entanglement, and the connection between modern conventional and nuclear operations.

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We have data! Jeffrey and Aaron walk through the new primary source data to figure out if either Iran's missile raid or Israeli's missile defense efforts were effective. This appears to be the first time that successful wartime ballistic missile defense intercepts can be validated via open source means, which is a major step forward for open source missile and BMD analysis. 

Jeffrey and Aaron also talk about the relative impact of conventional ballistic missiles, and what secondary effects must be considered when assessing the value of interceptors vs. offensive missiles. 

This one gets wonky. 

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And you may find yourself not complying with the IAEA

And you may find yourself in a war in another part of the world

And you may find yourself making a metaphor about an automobile

And you may find yourself enriching your uranium stocks, and building reactors

And you may ask yourself "Well, how did I get here?" 

 

Letting the days go by, politics will hold you down 

Letting the days go by, heavy water underground 

Into Fordow again, maybe to Isfahan

Once in a lifetime, realignment all around

 

Same as it ever was, Same as it ever was

 

Jeffrey and Aaron go through the current state of play in Iranian politics (just prior to its massive missile strike on Israel), particularly around the nuclear program and what the bomb genuinely means for security and Iranian internal politics, and review how we got here over the past 20 years of Arms Control Wonkery.

 

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William Alberque joins Jeffrey for a friendly and deep debate about the Russian Navy nuclear documents leaked to FT, covered in our previous episode.

This is a fascinating discussion not only on the documents themselves, but what they imply for Russia's view of its own territorial integrity, what it needs to convince its soldiers to go to bat for, and the eternal issues of "self-deterrence".  

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Max Seddon and Chris Cook with the Financial Times have written an excellent piece on leaked Russian Naval documents that FT saw, focused on thresholds for Russian nuclear use, especially in a war scenario with China. 

Jeffrey and Aaron go through what the documents reveal and debate if they're generally consistant with what is understood about Russian nuclear doctrine or, as FT states, indicate that the threshold is lower than previous understood.  

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Road trip to Vegas.

As part of an NGO transparency visit, NNSA opened up the Nevada Test Site to a group of international nuclear weapons experts, including one Dr. Jeffrey Lewis.

Jeffrey goes through what he saw: P Tunnel, The BEEF, and the crown jewel, U1a. This was an NNSA exercise in transparency, aimed at showing the community and world that the U.S. stockpile stewardship and treaty verification exercises are separate from nuclear explosive tests. It was also, and we cannot underline this enough, extremely cool.

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Shoigu went shopping. 

Russia is buying KN-23 and KN-25 missiles from North Korea and launching them in support of its invasion of Ukraine. Imagery from on the ground clearly shows North Korean style solid-propellant missiles.

Jeffrey and Aaron talk about what this means for global ballistic missile proliferation, possible South Korean responses, and the continued rise of North Korea as a ballistic missile exporter.

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North Korea finally got a reconnaissance satellite into orbit, after several failed prior attempts! While it is a little rough around the edges, every program has to start somewhere.

Jeffrey and Aaron talk through the implications of the DPRK's reconnaissance satellite, the relationship of the DPRK missile and space programs, and the importance of high fashion for the spacelaunching elites. 

 

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Take a listen to the latest season of Jeffrey Lewis's podcast, The Reason We're All Still Here

Far too often, governments behave like toddlers. They're fickle. They don't like to share. And good luck getting them to pay attention to any problem that isn't directly in front of them. They like to push each other to the brink, and often do. But when they don't, it's usually because other people enter the proverbial room. Private citizens who step up and play peacemaker when their governments won't or can't. People who strive for collaboration and understanding, and sometimes end up finding it in unlikely places. Those people and the work they do, they're the reason we're all still here.

This season, we'll hear from scientists, analysts, and idealists who have gone to crazy lengths just for a shot at making peace and building understanding From smoke-filled rooms in North Korea to secret labs in the Soviet Union… to the lawless seas, and even to the depths of outer space (or, at least, the conference rooms where they talk about the depths of outer space). This podcast tells the stories about the people holding us back from the brink.

Hosted by ​​Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, a professor and scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies on the Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies faculty. Previously, he served as Director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation and Executive Director of the Managing the Atom Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. He is the founder of ArmsControlWonk.com, a leading resource on disarmament, arms control and nonproliferation issues.

 

Produced by Gilded Audio and the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies

Jeffrey and Scott watched the new Kathryn Bigelow movie "House of Dynamite" and they both have opinions.

The crew talks through both the artistic choices as well as the wonky details. "House of Dynamite" is an interesting take on missile defense and decisionmaking that doesn't quite commit enough to any philosophical or strategic camp, but ultimately may be the lens through which a lot of non-wonks view or interact with missile defenses, conceptually, as we move towards a potential major expansion of US missile defenses. 

We should do a watch party.

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Looks like everyone is preparing for a party. 

Between Russia's potential un-signing of a nuclear test treaty, threats to test "if the United States does," and refurbishments at Novaya Zemlya, things aren't looking great for the longevity of nuclear test ban norms. China and the U.S. have been modernizing too, though the U.S. has offered to allow monitors on-site to verify U.S. lack of testing. 

 

Jeffrey and Aaron sit down to talk about the recent developments in Russia, and the likelyhood that there will be a return to explosive nuclear testing in the future.

 

The Era Without Arms Control continues, and threatens to deepen.

 

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Sam Lair joins the podcast to talk about Kim Jong Un's recent whirlwind tour of the North Korean Defense Industrial Base with Jeffrey and Scott.

If you're into missiles, geolocation, and machine tools (and, if you listen to this podcast, you probably are), you're going to want to tune in.

Sam and Jeffrey have been mapping out the DPRK DIB, including plant managers, machine tool lineages, production lines, and evolutions over time. Kim's visit to these plants, and the accompanying KCNA imagery storm, unlocked a trove of new information about where nuclear delivery systems are produced and maintained, and updated our ideas for how big the arsenal may be.

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Jeffrey is joined by the illustrious Kelsey Atherton to discuss Christopher Nolan's film Oppenheimer, as well as the history and legacy of the titular man himself. Kelsey and Jeffrey dive into the choice to focus on Oppenheimer's own security legacy and bypass the direct and indirect horrors affected upon the Congolese miners, New Mexicans, and Japanese civilians, as well as the intentional rendering of power politics and personal animus within the U.S. security apparatus. 

Kelsey penned a companion piece over at the Arms Control Wonk Blog, talking about the wider related experience of watching Barbie and Oppenheimer in the same day. 

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Jeffrey is back from Hiroshima, where he participated in a Track 2 nuclear dialogue. The outlook for near-term arms control is still grim.

Jeffrey and Aaron unpack the G7 statements on disarmament that the Japanese representatives wanted to re-affirm, the tacit condemnation of Russian and Chinese contained within, and the global theater around narrative control of arms control. 

Russian, US, and third party interpretations of CTBT and disarmament discussions create significant friction, but the discussion is well moderated by the traditional 5:00 happy hour. 

 

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Germany has a gap that needs to be filled in the face of Russian threats. But this time it isn't Fulda, it is....the exoatmospheric layer of ballistic missile defenses?

Jeffrey and Aaron try to understand Germany's decision to buy the very fancy Israeli/American Arrow-3 exoatmospheric BMD system, in absense of a specific Russian missile system and despite two Aegis Ashore sites coming online in Europe. 

 

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Jeffrey is back from Japan and North Korea's satellite-turned-submarine is back from the bottom of the ocean!

North Korea's failed Chollima-1 space launcher and its payload, the Malligyong-1, failed to reach space on May 30. Jeffrey and Aaron talk about the Japanese response to the launch, the North Korean reponse to the failure, and whether or not people are tacitly starting to accept North Korean space capabilities.

Are the DPRK's space capabilities overlapping with their missile capabilities? How far have their technological arcs diverged, and where are they still overlapping? And is the Chollima-1's second stage a stolen Ukrainian design, or something new and domestic?

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Ankit Panda joins Jeffrey by the every so fancy pool at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, where they talk about competing speeches and messaging, the views on US-China competition from Southeast Asia, and about how Jeffrey didn't make any new friends in the PLA this year.

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Ukraine is getting the SCALP-EG/Storm Shadow cruise missile, and that's raising a whole lot of questions about MTCR guidelines 

Jeffrey and Aaron talk about the history of the Missile Technology Control Regime, what it was meant to originally address, and the whole host of problems associated with figuring out what a destabilizing cruise missile really looks like. 

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President Yoon of South Korea recently visited the United States to talk nukes and Don McLean with President Biden.

Jeffrey and Aaron talk through what the Declaration actually covers, how much was material and how much was fluff, and the moonwalking capabilities of the D5 SLBM. 

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FINALLY. 

After almost a decade of hinting and teasing and parading fake empty canisters, North Korea has debuted its long-awated solid propellant ICBM. And the team have some questions about where the construction and testing sites were...

 

Jeffrey, Scott, and Dave descend upon the CNS DC offices for a rare in-person podcast to commemorate the event we've been waiting on for years.

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Donald Trump directed "the Department of War to start testing our
Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis" with other countries.  The
Department of War doesn't test nuclear weapons, the Department of
Energy does all the time in lots of different ways.  Some people
worried this meant a return to explosive testing, others seemed to
think it was about delivery systems.  Subsequent statements by the
Vice President and the Secretary of Defense didn't clarify things.
Aaron and Jeffrey sit down to try to make some sense of it all.

 

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The IAEA is doing a great job with the s**t we're handing them. A very jetlagged Jeffrey joins Aaron to talk about the IAEA and the very positive role that Director General Rafael Grossi has played in trying to hold together the nuclear situation with Iran. JCPOA-holdover cameras, discontinuity in footage, and a bunch of suddenly friendliness from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia all make for a tense and confusing situation. 

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New START has been in peril for years. The first episode of the pod was about the INF Treaty being in danger, and here we are, 8 years later, with almost no arms control treaties left.

Maybe it is time to rename the pod Arms Race Wonk, because the next few years are going to be scary. 

Jeffrey and Aaron talk through the Era Without (Bilateral) Arms Control, the immanent two-front deterrence challenge, and how being scared as **** is the only way we know deterrence is working. 

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Jeffrey, Aaron, and Scott say the unthinkable: we're a little tired of the parades. But we're glad the youthes are still ordering pizza and crowding around the computer to watch. 

North Korea paraded at least 15 ICBMs, including 4 that were clearly meant to look like solid-propellent ICBMs. We've been down this road before, they've played with our hearts. But now we're in the era where a solid ICBM is very possible, and a solid ICBM test is expected. 

The team talks about what got paraded, what the solid propellant ICBMs mean, the end of several long-running ACW threads, and Scott gets real excited about big trucks. 

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Both plan on going first, but...

President Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea is being piled on for discussing South Korean pursuits of nuclear weapons (although what he said *exactly* was distorted a little).

In the face of increasing pressure to respond to North Korea's nuclear posture, South Korea is realistically pursuing capabilities for rapid, precision strikes. North Korea feels similarly. 

As Jeffrey always says: both plan on going first in a conflict, but one of them is going to be wrong.  

Jeffrey and Aaron walk through President Yoon's statements, the complexities of the security situation on the Korean Peninsula, and the instabilities that result from mutual pre-emptive strike postures. 

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Tyler Nighswander and Mike Nute have developed an incredible tool for detecting long-range missile and space launches by processing and visualizing ionospheric disturbances in GPS data. 

In one of the most fascinating and technically complex episodes of the ACW pod, Tyler and Mike join Jeffrey to talk about their wild new open-source intelligence tool, how it works, and what it means for missile and rocket observation. 

 

A visualization of their work can be seen here: https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/1593452159365918722?s=20&t=hAI_EJvR8zCRMqj9u36yuw

And, of course, shout out to the ACW Slack Channel, wherin Tyler and Mike started this project. 

Tyler and Mike can be found on twitter at:  @tylerni7 and @michaelnute

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Jeeze that was a big missile.

North Korea has tested another large ICBM, and this one was (another) doozy. Jeffrey and Aaron talk through modelling this missile, the potential theft of missile tech from Ukraine, Kim Jong Un's Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, and the incredible Missile Launch Detection tool that @tylerni7 and @michaelnute have spearheaded in the ACW Slack channel. 

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The Biden administration has been working to re-kindle New START talks with Russia, while working to deter Russian WMD use in Ukraine, in an era that increasingly appears to be about risk management instead of risk reduction. How do you restart heavily managed talks in an era of COVID restrictions? How do you do on-site inspections during a conventional conflict? 

Jeffrey and Aaron talk through the rough state of international nuclear arms control, the increasingly-complex balance of nuclear forces globally, and the core aspects of what makes deterrence actually work. 

 

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Launch a missile get a pod

Launch a missile get a pod

Launch a missile get a pod

Launch a missile get a pod

Launch a missile get a pod

Launch a missile get a pod

Launch a missile get a pod

Launch a missile get a pod

Launch a missile get a pod

Launch a missile get a pod

 

Aaron and Jeffrey talk about North Korea's record-setting number of missile launches and what the North Korean launch authorities look like.  A new(?) ICBM, a new Hwasong-12 variant, the bizarre reservoir-bottom lake-missile, and a whole lotta rocket artillery are all keeping the community *very* busy... 

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The Russian invasion of Ukraine is giving people brain worms. Multiple terrible reports, citing oSiNt aNaLyStS, have recently been released and grossly overexaggerated the risk of nuclear weapons use around Ukraine. These reports, particularly about the "nuclear weapons convoy headed towards Ukraine," don't help anyone and just add noise to a chaotic narrative. 

Jeffrey and Aaron take a knife to bad analysis, and muse on what deterrence actually means to the people living under it.

 

 

Tangentially related, Superproducer Scott is so excited to use this opening again, a year after its last use. 

 

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Does North Korea have a triad? Perhaps a boostrapped, janky triad? How mature is their arsenal at this point?

North Korea lobbed a Hwasong-12 over Japan after a week of smaller missile tests, and sparked a testy exchange of missile tests and aircraft scramblings. Jeffrey and Aaron talk about missile overflights, what it means to begrudgingly accept a new nuclear power, and what North Korean nuclear strategy looks like in 2022. 

 

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Alex Ward and others at the Wall Street Journal reported on the details of a Pentagon review process that has halted Ukraine's ability to conduct long-range strikes into Russia with ATACMs, Storm Shadow and other systems that need US targeting data. Jeffrey and Aaron talk about what we already knew, what we didn't, and what it all mean. Hint: Allies should stand up their own targeting capabilities.  

Watch the video episode here!

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What the heck is going on with the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Planet?
Aaron and Jeffrey walk through the safety situation, the open source assessments of what is going on, and what appears to be a Russian strategy to....steal a power plant?

Links of Note:

Russia Tries to Steal a Nuclear Power Plant, Cheryl Rofer

 

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Why isn't North Korea testing nukes? What are the signals and signs that precede a test? 
Jeffrey and Aaron talk testing indicators, the logistics of detonating a nuclear device in North Korea, and the proper use of the Chatham House Rule...

The team talks about the impact of Michael Krepon on the field and on us personally. He will be greatly missed, and his importance and mentorship in the field of arms control cannot be understated. 

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As the President visited various states in the Middle East, Jeffrey and Aaron sat down to eulogize the JCPOA renegotiation attempts as they slowly slide farther off the rails. Iran's programs continue and it looks like the U.S. is preparing to continue into the sanctions and containment realm, as Israel continues its seemingly ineffective hardware sabotage campaign. The North Korea-ification of Iran-US relations continues, unabated.   Support us over at Patreon.com/acwpodcast!

Jeffrey and Aaron walk through a piece of foundational field canon, The Wizards of Armageddon by Fred Kaplan, discussing its coverage of institutional and personal decisionmaking, picking apart the concepts of deterrence and compellence, and discussing the seemingly crystalized debate on the same core tenets, decades after the initial events. 

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