ArmsControlWonk.com

Of the many reasons I have a soft spot for the intelligence community, one is this: imagine how hard it is to produce a document that is both precise and readable.

That’s the same challenge I face on the blog, but the IC can’t include gratuituous jokes of a certain kind just to liven things up. (It also helps that you, dear readership, tend to be a couple of standard deviations above the mean when it comes to technical facility.)

I was amused by a chart that our intern — the talented Alex Kahan, who New America shares with Brookings — found in an old China DIE (PRC Strategic Forces: How Much is Enough? DIE FE 7-74, 3 December 1974 . Thanks to Bill Burr, who actually provided us with the copy.)

Look familiar? Here is a chart from the 2007 NIE, Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities

It is fascinating to see that earlier generations faced the same challenges and how little the basic structure of the language has changed. You could use the 1974 chart to decipher the 2007 NIE without too much confusion.

The one change, of course, has been the post-politicization effort to make analysts express confidence levels, which I don’t think are independent of the estimative language.

What does it mean, for example, to have “low confidence that Iran probably has imported at least some weapons-usable fissile material …” How can evidence in which you have little confidence or no confidence, that lead you to conclude that something is not merely plausible, but probable?

Maybe its just my pet peeve, but such language seems mostly to serve as a permission slip for the Doug Feith’s of the world to disregard the estimate.

Comment

In an unfortunately title article in Jane’s Intelligence Review (“Safir When Ready: Iran sets its sights on long-range capability”; sorry, its subscription only) I discussed why I interpreted pictures of the test-stand version of a Safir second stage as indicating Iran was developing a new advance in its missile program: a clustering of two engines that are gimbaled for thrust vector control.

In yesterday’s post, I discussed why eliminating the jet vanes could be used to lower the dead weight associated with storing the smaller amount of fuel required to produce the same change in velocity.

Today, I want to estimate how much dead weight is either saved or used up in the engines alone when you cluster them. (The last post in this series will try to put it all together and discuss how much Iran will have to improve its technology in order to get an ICBM capable of launching a nuclear weapon at the United States.)

This post might be excessively techno-wonkish but as an added bonus, for those of you who are willing to wade through the details, it should yield some interesting insights into the level of Al Samoud/SCUD/Nodong engine technology.

As can be imagined, a missile’s engines constitute a major portion of the “dead” weight contribution outside of the payload. Engine weights have, therefore, been a major area of research with much work going into reducing the weight per ton of thrust. A wonderful book, if you can get it, is Aerospace Vehicle Design: Spacecraft Design (vol. 2) by K. D. Wood. It basically covers every important aspect of designing missiles and spacecraft and, most importantly for this analysis, has a ton of empirically derived graphs. I’ve reproduced a couple of these below. Engine weight, including the turbopump and piping, as a function thrust is shown on the left while the turbopump weight alone is shown on the right.

I’ve added three points to the plot on the left: the Al Samoud II, the SCUD-B and the Nodong engines. The first two are based on actual measurements while I estimated the third, the Nodong, from an admittedly arbitrary curve that I drew using the Al Samoud and the SCUD points and the rough shape of the two curves surrounding it: the World War II range of rocket engines and the range identified as “Attainable Range, 1960-70.” Remember, this is a blog and not a refereed journal! (The book was published in 1964.) This “SCUD-family” of engines falls nicely between the two. Does that mean that the SCUD technology is worse than Western technology dating from the 1960s? Not at all! SCUDs were designed for rough handling and do not use the high energy fuels that the racehorses of the era, the space launch vehicles, did; namely cryogenic fuels. Both of these factors have the effect of increasing the engine weight per ton of thrust.

There have been a number estimates for the thrust of the Nodong/Shahab missile which can be used for estimating the engine/turbopump masses using the graphs above. I’ve used the thrust from a set of parameters for the Nodong originally published by Robert Schmucker in estimating the Nodong/Shahab/Safir 1st stage engine weight, including its turbopump and associated piping, as weighing 330 kg.

You can use the graphs above to do the same for your favorite missiles. Let me summarize a few of the weight combinations that I find most interesting:

*These are measured quantities. All others are estimates or derived from measured quantities.

So what does this tell us?

The Safir does not manage to save much weight (just 2 kg) by using a single SCUD turbopump as opposed to one turbopump for each Safir engine, assuming the turbopump is sized for the individual Safir engine. Iran might, however, save an addition 14 kg if they developed a new, single turbopump for the cluster of two engines. But would that be worth it, considering the time and resources they would have to devote to developing a new and unique turbopump? Obviously, Iran has decided it would not. I cannot help but agree with them. Perhaps when their space/missile industry has developed enough to afford the human resources to devote multiple teams to multiple turbopump design project they can. This points out one of the most important of scarce resources to any country just starting to develop new rockets: trained and skilled manpower!

We know now that Iraq was planning on using the airframe developed for the Al Samoud and stuffing a second Volga engine in it for a two engine cluster. (This possibility, which we considered very likely, was a crucial factor in why UNMOVIC proscribed the Al Samoud II.) Here too, the proliferator would have gained about 14 kg by developing a new, single turbopump for the cluster. Here too, the proliferator chose not to develop a new turbopump, again presumably because the resource costs for such development would have been too high. (Also, Iraq never did manage to develop its own turbopump!) On the other hand, a SCUD turbopump would be considerably overpowered for a two Volga engine cluster and would actually weigh more (142 kg vs. 120 kg) than having each engine retain its own turbopump, the course Iraq actually planned on using. Would Iraq have gained other benefits from using the Volga turbopump? Would it have been easier for them to balance the thrusts of the two engines by controlling the two turbopumps? Or would it be more difficult? Both, it seems to me, would have required considerable R&D but I would guess that a single turbopump would be easier. Of course, I could be wrong; thoughts, Wonk readers?

Finally, a cluster of four Nodong engines—such as has been reportedly used in the first stage of the Tae’podong II—saves well over 100 kg in weight if it uses a single turbopump developed and optimized for that configuration. Is that enough to justify a proliferator developing a new turbopump? Perhaps we will only know for certain when we start seeing images of that stage appear in public. We will put those weight savings in perspective when we compare the two strategies for developing ICBMs: stacking existing missiles one on top of the other vs. developing new airframes for existing engines. (I tend to think of these two paths as the North Korean path vs. the Iranian path, but perhaps I’m jumping to conclusions too much!)

I am postponing the fourth post in this series, which will consider the US estimates of Iran’s missile development program, until Monday to consider the discussion we have had on the Sejil.

Comment

The National Academies is having a release party (ok, release event) for the English-Chinese, Chinese-English Nuclear Security Glossary.

I saw Ben Rusek and Wu Jun give a joint talk on the subject in Qingdao.

Be there or B ² Sorry, math joke.

The Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) of the U.S. National Academies, with its partner the Chinese Scientists Group on Arms Control (CSGAC) of the Chinese People’s Association for Peace and Disarmament, recently completed an English-Chinese Chinese – English Glossary of Nuclear Security Terms. This glossary of approximately 1000 terms is built on 20 years of CISAC CSGAC Track II discussions on nuclear arms control, nuclear nonproliferation, nuclear energy, and regional security issues and is intended to facilitate progress in diplomatic, academic, scientific, or other activities where unambiguous understanding is essential.

Speakers

Ming-Shih Lu, Committee Chair, Brookhaven National Laboratory (retired)
Richard L. Garwin, CISAC China Dialogue Chair, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, IBM Corporation (emeritus)
Raymond Jeanloz, CISAC Chair, University of California, Berkeley
Benjamin J. Rusek staff officer, CISAC

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

2:00PM – 4:00PM

Room 204, National Academy of Sciences Keck Building

500 5th Street, NW Washington, DC, 20001

Please RSVP for building security

Please RSVP by Fax: 202-334-1730 Phone: 202-334-2811 or Email: ybutt[at]nas.edu

The event is free and open to the public. Users who are unable to attend can access an on-line version of the glossary designed for English and Chinese speakers, and instructions on how to comment on the contents of the glossary at: http://www7.nationalacademies.org/cisac/Glossary_CISAC.html For additional information please contact: Ben Rusek at cisac[at]nas.edu or by phone at 202-334-2811

Comment

Yesterday, I discussed the possibility that Iran was learning techniques that might help them utilize higher energy fuels such as UDMH and nitric acid. However, the evidence for such use is rather minimal. The case we examined yesterday was not very convincing and, while there is still room for doubt (see Jochen Schischka’s comments), I think that that the balance of the evidence still leans toward Iran utilizing kerosene/nitric acid combinations. What is know is that Iran is trying to improve its engines and get a higher specific impulse—a measure of how energetic the combination of propellant and engine is—regardless of what fuel it is using. (The technical definition of specific impulse is the thrust delivered by the engine divided by the weight of propellant burned per second.) While Iran’s efforts to do this are most obvious on the Safir’s second stage, it is possible that Iran is also taking the lead away from North Korea in improving the specific impulse of the Shahab/Nodong/Safir 1st stage as well!

People often forget that the design of the engine has a direct effect on the specific impulse and usually compare the theoretical specific impulses of various fuel and oxidizer combinations. If you simply compare these theoretical values for UDMH/nitric acid and RP-1/nitric acid (RP-1 is a kerosene-like fuel similar to the kerosene-based fuel the SCUD uses) you get a ratio of 276/268, in vacuum, and thus an increase of only 3% by going to the more energetic fuel. But the design of the SCUD engine, and in particular, its thrust vector control mechanism robs the propellants of a considerable amount thrust! Consider the images below, which show the jet vanes for the Iraqi Al Samoud II, the SCUD-B, North Korea’s Tae’podong 1, and Iran’s Kavoshgar 1 (which I assume are identical to those on the Shahab and the first stage of the Safir).

Note the differences in specific impulses, Isp, between the Al Samoud II and the SCUD-B. It is true that these two missiles use different fuels (the Al Samoud uses TEGA 2, aka Tonka, while the SCUD-B uses TM-184; both are hydrocarbons) and will certainly have slightly different base specific impulses. However, it is widely understood that the jet vanes on the Al Samoud II, for instance, rob the engine of as much as 5% of its thrust. This would account for just over 10 s of Isp! It is not too hard to imagine that the SCUD’s larger Isp might, in part, be due to its jet vanes covering somewhat less of the its nozzle exit area. (This, by the way, is what the subtitle of this post is all about.) I’d be interested if any of you out there (John?) wouldn’t mind calculating this effect from first principles.

What I find most interesting about this comparison is that the Iranian jet vanes appear somewhat smaller to me and are, perhaps, angled outwards so that they interact with more of the peripheral part of the exhaust than North Korea’s Tae’podong 1. Is this an indication that Iran has diverged from the Nodong missile it is reported to have imported from North Korea to optimize its thrust? If so, it is an another indication that Iran is leading the way among the so-called proliferating nations: Iran, Syria, North Korea, … in developing better missiles.

This improvement is, of course, a minor one since it still uses jet vanes to control the direction of the first stage’s thrust. But as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, it is more effective to improve the specific impulse of a missile’s second stage. This is exactly what Iran has done by developing a cluster of two gimbaled engines for the second stage of the Safir missile.

Until I started writing these series of posts, I wondered why Iran was putting so much effort into gimbaled engines as opposed to developing a new, higher energy-density propellant combination. Now, I think, we can see the answer. By eliminating the jet vanes, Iran has produced almost the same improvement in delivered thrust as it would get if it had switched to a UDMH/IRFNA combination. Of course, it would be best if Iran did both but doing both at once would significantly increase the development risk and it makes sense for Iran to take these challenges one at a time.

Increasing the effective specific impulse of its engines by removing the jet vanes implies that Iran can cut down not only on the volume (and hence weight) of propellant but also the amount of tankage or dead-weight of the tanks. The next post in this series, on clustering engines, will examine the change in “dead-weight” associated with clustering engines. It will also probably be one of the most techno-wonkish of all this series of posts and I apologize for that in advance.

Comment [5]

Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions 1737 (2006), 1747 (2007), 1803 (2008) and 1835 (2008) in the Islamic Republic of Iran, GOV/2008/59 (November 19, 2008).

Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Syrian Arab Republic, GOV/2008/60 (November 19, 2008).

I think we beat our friends at ISIS, for a change. Enjoy!

(Or they put it up on their cool new Iran blog)

Comment [5]

I thought I’d try an experiment in blogging: a five part series going into the details of Iran’s liquid-propellant missile development program; something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. (The over-all title of the series is “Scaling Up the SCUD” but I don’t have enough room to put that in every time.) Iran’s missiles are one of the main threats the US sees on the horizon and, if your believe General Obering, the Director of the Missile Defense Agency, could attack the United States as early as 2010. But that will require a considerable advance in Iranian technology! Just how reasonable is that? I hope that by the end of this series, you will have a good idea of the technological challenges Iran would have to overcome to justify that concern.

Today’s topic of discussion is motivated by a close-up of the nozzle of a Shahab missile, the same sort of engine that was used on the first stage of the Safir launch August 17th, 2008. (The paint scheme of desert tan seems to indicate it’s a deployed Shahab as opposed to one of the “civilian” launches. Note that you can just start to see two of the four jet vanes to the lower left and right.) Some goop is smeared on the inside of its smallest diameter, the throat of the nozzle: What’s with the Goop?

The goop doesn’t completely seal off the throat, nor even make an appreciable change in its area so I think we can rule out functions such as keeping dirt and dust out of the thrust chamber as the missile is driven around the desert or temporarily increasing the “stay” time of the fuel during ignition. My current best guess is that it’s a wax-like substance that is used to temporarily close holes intended to “film cool” the nozzle.

To understand a possible explanation, let’s consider the startup process in a missile. First, several squibs, or small pyrotechnic charges, are fired at several places in the fuel and oxidizer lines to open up seals that keep them in the tanks before ignition. Simultaneously, a larger charge is ignited to produce gas to start the turbopump turning and sucking fuel and oxidizer down out of their tanks. This pump pushes the fuel (in the case of a SCUD) through the regenerative cooling system. That too deserves some explanation.

The rocket engine’s combustion process produces gases that are very hot, roughly 2700o C for a SCUD, and the combustion chamber needs to be protected against that heat. (Steel, by the way, looses all its strength at about 1000o C.) To do this, the Soviet designers made the combustion chamber with an inner liner and an outer shell with a small gap between the two. Fuel is pumped through that gap before it enters the combustion chamber, both cooling the inner wall and preheating the fuel before it is burned. A highly efficient system! But if the chamber generates too much heat—or if there are problems with the regenerative cooling system, say if bubbles form at an undesirably low temperature—another method of cooling must be introduced. A natural thing is to take some of the fuel as it is circulated through the gap and spray it though little holes in the inner shell to create an additional cool-gas barrier between the hot center and the steel walls. I don’t remember seeing any such holes on SCUD engines and I cannot find any mention of them in my reference material. Do any of you readers know?

Here is where the policy implication comes in. If Iran is ever going to make a real ICBM, it needs to switch from SCUD-type fuels to higher energy fuels. But you get considerably more than just an increase in thrust from using higher energy fuels! You can reduce the volume of fuel used and, hence, the dead weight of the missile; the structure of the missile. The advantages don’t stop there! Lower missile weights means you don’t need as much structural strength possibly enabling you to switch to lighter materials, such as aluminum. You get the picture. A relatively modest increase in specific impulse by going to UDMH and nitric acid will increase the range of the missile much, much more than you might initially think. The problem is keeping the engine cool!

Iraq tried to advance to the next higher energy level of fuel by using UDMH and nitric acid but the problems associated with that higher energy fuel caused a burn-through in the SCUD engine’s radiatively-cooled nozzle skirt 14 seconds after the burn was started. (Would the combustion chamber have burned through if the test had gone on longer? That is the question! Note, however, that I don’t say “higher temperatures.” In fact, UDMH and nitric acid actually have only a slightly lower combustion temperature than standard SCUD propellants but there is a lot more involved in cooling than combustion temperature. That’s why it’s called rocket science!) Let’s assume—we certainly haven’t proved it!—that the goop is covering film-cooling holes until after ignition. Do those holes indicate that Iran has the capability of cooling its engines more than Iraq was able to? Will they be able to jump to higher energy fuels and quickly make an ICBM? And if so, why are they messing about with SCUD-type fuel for the Safir second stage? After all, doesn’t it makes more sense to use a higher energy fuel in the second stage where reductions in dead weight really payoff?

Part 2 of this discussion will consider what development path Iran is known to be following with the second stage of its Safir missile. (See the detailed post by Jochen Schischka for an alternative view of the propellant used by the Safir. I remain firmly of the opinion that it used propellants like RP-1 and nitric acid; SCUD-type fuels.) Until then, I look forward to reading your comments!

Comment [5]

Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) gave an outstanding talk to a roundtable I co-hosted this morning at the Center for American Progress, my home institution, to mark the release of a study by Joe Cirincione and me, Orienting the 2009 Nuclear Posture Review: A Roadmap. Congresswoman Tauscher, who chairs the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, was the driving force behind the requirement in the FY 2008 Defense Authorization Bill that the next administration undertake a formal nuclear posture review (NPR).

Our study makes the case for why a successful NPR should be among the Obama administration’s top priorities. I suspect this is an easy case to make to most Wonk readers.

But the study also provides a roadmap on how to structure and manage the review so that it achieves key policy objectives. The roadmap is based on lessons learned from the Clinton and Bush administration NPRs, along with some two dozen interviews and informal discussions with experts, congressional staff, and former senior officials with experience in nuclear policy from both sides of the political spectrum.

This is our basic argument:

The goals of the 2009–2010 NPR should be to recalibrate America’s nuclear deterrent in light of existing and emerging threats, strengthen America’s hand in negotiations on improvements to the global nuclear nonproliferation regime, and send a clear signal to the world that the United States is charting a new, multilateral course. Success in achieving these goals hinges on development of a coherent, realistic strategy for conducting the review that ensures senior appointees devote sustained attention even as they confront other national security challenges. The strategy should be organized according to these principles:

• Do not politicize nuclear weapons doctrine.
• Conduct the review as a strategy-driven exercise guided by a vision for nuclear weapons policy elaborated by the president.
• Consult and engage the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• Consult and engage Congress.
• Appoint experienced professionals to carry out the vision.
• Ensure that the review is interagency.
• Consult and engage key allies and partners.

And here are some of the highlights from Congresswoman Tauscher’s remarks:

The new NPR should recommend ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Fifteen years of science-based stockpile stewardship programs have made it possible for the United States to use our brain power and scientific tools, rather than testing in the Nevada desert to ensure the reliability of our nuclear deterrent.

No other single action could send a clearer signal to the rest of the world that the United States is committed to controlling the spread of nuclear weapons and materials.

Too often we are presented with a false choice. Either maintaining an unnecessarily high level of nuclear weapons as a hedge against uncertainty which I believe would undermine our efforts to reduce global nuclear risks or allowing our arsenal to rust and corrode away.

Neither is acceptable.

From 1994 to 2004, we had a law on the books called “Spratt-Furse” that prohibited research and development of so-called mini-nukes. It was important because of the signal it sent to the world that the United States was not looking for new applications for nuclear weapons.

As we embark into the next phase of stockpile stewardship, we should renew the Spratt-Furse law, so our intentions are clear.

Comment [5]

How about when half of it is liquid propellants? How about when it includes all of the deadweight—fuel tanks, turbopumps, and engines—associated with liquid propellant engines? How about when it makes no attempt to solve one of the major problems of solid-propellant technology: thrust vector control? Hi wonk readers! Jeffrey has kindly taken off my training wheels and let me be a guest blogger on his outstanding armscontrolwonk in my own right. I had thought I’d start my tenure here with a series of posts about Iran’s liquid propellant missile development program but I’m going to postpone that start until tomorrow. In stead, I thought I would weigh in on Iran’s solid-propellant missile. Ooops! I mean to say on their new liquid-propellant missile. Wait, that’s not exactly correct either. You know the one I mean; it’s the liquid-propellant missile with a solid-propellant motor in it. They call it the Sejil.

I’ve just come back from Croatia where the hotel’s internet was so flaky that I couldn’t do anything, so this post has been delayed by several days. I heard the news that Iran had launched a “two-stage, solid-propellant missile” with a range of 2,000 km literally as I was boarding the airplane on my way to London. I spent the entire flight wondering how I could be so wrong about the status of Iran’s solid-propellant development program. You see, there was no evidence that Iran had even experimented with thrust vector control (TVC) techniques suitable for solid propellant missiles. Graphite jet vanes, like Iran uses on its Shahab and its derivative missiles, corrode and fail very quickly in the high temperatures and corrosive environments associated with solid-propellant grains that use aluminum powder to boost their specific impulse. Fluid injection, like India used for the first stage of its SLV-3 (and the Agni I), requires considerable development both on static test stands with multiple degrees of freedom and flight tests on smaller missiles. The use of flexible nozzles also requires considerable R&D. None of which has shown up on Iranian short range solid-propellant missiles. Instead, they had seemed to be developing aerodynamic controls for these missiles instead of TVC. In particular, they have experimented with canards on some of their short range solid-fueled rockets; avoiding the entire TVC issue all together.

In contrast, and this was the really surprising thing, I think they used fairly large gimbaled engines to accomplish TVC for the Sejil. We know they are fairly large because the fuel and oxidizer tanks take up half of the first stage volume. The clincher that this was a largely liquid propellant missile, by the way, is the piping coming from the middle of what many supposed to be a solid propellant combustion chamber. Judging from the weld lines seen in other images of the Sejil, the missile uses over five tons of kerosene/nitric acid to power the four gimbaled engines in the first stage. (There is no indication that I can see that the second stage was anything other than an airframe with inert weight inside. Has anybody seen reports that it actually was live? This would explain the Fox report that it suffered a “failure” and only flew 180 miles.)

Using liquid propellant engines to provide TVC for the Sejil does nothing for Iran’s development of solid-propellant missiles and is far from a major advance in their technology. It could be argued, however, that the Sejil does advance the liquid propellant technologies Iran has been trying to perfect with the August launch of the Safir with its cluster of twin gimbaled engines. Of course it’s possible, since I’m still working out the numbers, that adding a solid propellant boosting motor has substantially increased the payload capacity of this missile. In any case, Iran has continued its unique missile development path. Some of their innovations have been brilliant but I cannot help thinking that this one is pretty much a dead end.

There are still problems with my interpretation, namely, what I refer to as cowlings seem to hang down farther than I would expect steering engines to hang. That argues in favor of jet vanes. On the other hand, what is that pipe coming out of the middle of what is supposed to be a solid-propellant casing? Because of this, and other details, I believe that this is the correct interpretation, but I await your comments!

Tomorrow, I’m going to start a five part series of posts about Iran’s liquid propellant missile development program. The first installment will be a speculative piece asking about what evidence exists that Iran is trying to develop higher energy propellants than SCUD-type mixtures of kerosene and nitric acid. Until then, I look forward to your comments.

Comment [39]

I’ve now gotten several emails asking who was the inspiration for the Cold War Troglodyte. One writer wondered if it was an amalgam of Keir Lieber and Daryl Press. Another thought maybe Ward Wilson.

This is ridiculous.

Given that Press and Lieber are about as far from Ward Wilson as I can imagine, I realize that everyone I’ve attended conferences with for the past few months is probably wondering if post refers to them.

Stop what you are thinking; it is not you.

It is certainly not Keir, Daryl or Ward — all of whom I respect, like tremendously and invited to give talks at New America. It isn’t really anyone — it is a cartoon, not a real person.

As I said in the earlier post, the character was inspired by arguments that annoyed me, not some real-life wonk with a furrowed brow or sulking demeanor. And, since everyone is being all sensitive: the arguments that Keir, Daryl and Ward make, to the extent that I disagree with them, are NOT, REPEAT NOT, the sort of arguments that I would choose to parody with a caveman using powerpoint.

Look, the odds are that, unless I’ve actually told you directly that I think your slides would make nice cave paintings, I don’t think you are a Neanderthal.

It was a joke everybody. You can calm down.

Comment [11]

I have just returned from Berlin where I attended a meeting at the Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung. The meeting discussed a forthcoming report on the future of nuclear weapons in Europe. Specifically, it discussed whether now is the time to have a phased and incremental debate on what to do with NATO’s short-range nuclear forces. NATO’s tactical arsenal comprises some 2-300 nuclear gravity bombs deployed in Western Europe.

Does the Alliance need these weapons? Our chief wonk, Jeffrey Lewis, made his point of view reasonably clear back in June (see the entry NATO Nukes Not Secure and the discussion following it). I don’t have a personal opinion on whether tactical nuclear weapons matter for European defence, but it would seem to me that if you do want to get rid of them, now would be a good time.

While some politicians represented at the Foundation meeting seemed to question the utility of having these weapons around, the technocrats stressed the Alliance’s belief that the gravity bombs have a deterrent value. It was said that Alliance members are convinced that it is necessary to keep U.S. nuclear weapons on European soil.

One participant said that it is either “the present force structure or nothing”. Once the U.S. weapons are gone, he said, they won’t come back. And so, there was considerable concern of the proposed forward deployment of Russian weapons. Several argued for retaining the gravity bombs as a political counterweight.

On the other hand, there are discussions here in Britain, and elsewhere in Europe, about whether or not tactical nuclear weapons are “low hanging fruit” ripe to be picked in advance of the 2010 NPT Review Conference. And indeed, recent consultations amongst Alliance members seem to indicate that there that there is considerably less attachment to these weapons than previously assumed. In other words, the member states are not as convinced as the technocrats think.

The problem is that no NATO member is willing to be the first to make the proposal. This came across strongly in the coffee breaks. Presumably, members fear that other parties would interpret such a proposal as a signal of weakening commitment to the Alliance in a time of great military challenges.

And it would need to be an Alliance heavyweight that makes the first move, and preferably one where weapons are presently deployed.

If a member picks up the ball, it would seem to me that NATO’s 2009 summit – which also marks the Alliance’s 60th anniversary – would be the perfect venue to reach a decision. Whether a removal of tactical nuclear weapons from Western Europe would have a significant impact on the 2010 NPT review conference, however, is a matter very much open for debate.

Comment [10]