Arms Control Wonk

GMD vs. North Korean ICBMs, Ctd.

By joshua | 28 August 2012 | 15 Comments

Back in April, I asked how the Ground-based Midcourse Defense might be adapted in response to North Korea’s nascent (or embryonic) ICBM force. Thanks to Steven Aftergood of FAS, we now have the official answer. It’s included in the replies to Questions for the Record (QFRs) from a November 2011 hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. The hearing volume and the QFRs now appear at the FAS Secrecy News site.

The question from Rep. Doug Lamborn and the answer from Under Secretary of Defense for Policy James Miller appear below the jump.

Mr. LAMBORN. Do you agree with Secretary Gates who said at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in June, ‘‘With the continued development of long-range missiles and potentially a road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile and their continued development of nuclear weapons, North Korea is in the process of becoming a direct threat to the United States.’’ And two weeks later he said, ‘‘North Korea now constitutes a direct threat to the United States. The president told [China’s] President Hu that last year. They are developing a road-mobile ICBM. I never would have dreamed they would go to a road-mobile before testing a static ICBM. It’s a huge problem. As we’ve found out in a lot of places, finding mobile missiles is very tough.’’ Do you concur with Secretary Gates’ statements? Was the question of a North Korean road-mobile missile factored in to the decision in 2009 to abandon the Third Site and the deployment of 44 ground based interceptors at the missile fields at Fort Greely and Vandenberg Air Force Base? If North Korea begins fielding an array of road mobile ICBMs, and if they proliferate this technology to Iran and other countries as in the past, what does such activity do to current judgments about the adequacy of the current inventory of GBIs?

Dr. MILLER. I agree with Secretary Gates’ assessment that North Korea constitutes a direct threat to the United States, as it does to our South Korean and Japanese allies. North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and continued development of long-range missiles remain a primary focus of the development and deployment of the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS). The capabilities developed and deployed as part of the integrated BMDS protect the United States from the potential emergence of an ICBM threat from Iran or North Korea. To maintain this advantageous position, the Administration is taking steps to improve the protection of the homeland from the potential ICBM threat posed by Iran and North Korea. These steps include the continued procurement of ground-based interceptors (GBIs), the deployment of additional sensors, and upgrades to the Command, Control, Battle Management, and Communications system. Improvements to the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, in particular, will better protect the United States against future ICBM threats, whether from Iran, North Korea, or other regional actors.

In the future, if projections regarding Iran or North Korea change significantly, then the United States should reassess its baseline program and consider implementing some elements of our hedge posture.

Iranian HEU Traces: Don’t Panic

By joshua | 29 May 2012 | 32 Comments

By now everyone has seen the latest IAEA Iran report, GOV/2012/23. Among other bits that have drawn attention is paragraph 28, concerning swipe samples taken at the subterranean enrichment facility outside of Qom in mid-February. These samples “showed the presence of particles with enrichment levels of up to 27% U-235,” more than the level that’s supposed to be produced there. That’s highly enriched uranium, in fact.

Iran has told the IAEA that “the production of such particles ‘above the target value’ may happen for technical reasons beyond the operator’s control.” While that answer clearly isn’t too satisfying, is it plausible? Could be. I don’t pretend to know what actually happened that resulted in the presence of 27% enriched HEU where it shouldn’t be. But a set of possibilities that don’t involve an attempt at cheating can be discerned, and one or another of them may be reasonably likely. (Caution: wonkish.)

For starters, hidden in footnote 16 of the same report is a reminder of a previous episode of over-enrichment in Iran. It concerns the main enrichment hall at the Natanz facility, which isn’t supposed to produce more than 5% enriched LEU: “A small number of particles from samples taken in the cascade area continue to be found with enrichment levels of between 5% and 7.4% U-235… the Agency assesses that these results refer to a known technical phenomenon associated with the start-up of centrifuge cascades.”

That’d be the “time transient” described in Houston Wood and Stephanos Tongelidis, “Gas Centrifuge Cascade Study for Maximum Assays During Start-Up,” in Proceedings of the 47th Annual Meeting of the Institute for Nuclear Materials Management (2006). In plain English: UF6 gas is fed into a centrifuge cascade slowly at first. Because the centrifuges are doing their usual work on an smallish volume of gas during this time, that initial volume gets over-enriched. Before very long, though, it gets blended down to the target level by the introduction of the rest of the feed gas into the cascade. Thus the “transient” label.

Reflux Redux

The same phenomenon would occur if the operator slowed the feed rate for any reason at any time, not just at startup. The generic term for the condition of over-enrichment due to slow feed is “reflux.” An ACW commenter also observed back in Oct. 2010 that if Stuxnet accelerated the centrifuges beyond their normal speed, the results would look the same as a slowdown of feed.

Left unanswered is why traces would have escaped the cascade during a reflux episode. Normally, traces exit when opening the cascade, dumping its contents, withdrawing samples from it, or switching out a product container. Why do any of these things during the time transient or any other reflux episode? In that sense, the presence of the HEU traces isn’t quite “beyond the operator’s control,” but it seems to be a matter of carelessness. That’s a little surprising for a facility designed to operate just shy of the politically sensitive HEU threshold. Or perhaps not. As noted above, it’s not the first case of over-enriched uranium traces escaping an Iranian centrifuge cascade.

In this instance, Albright, Stricker, and Walrond of ISIS attribute the over-enrichment to an operator error involving the enlarged cascades at Qom; if the original feed rate used for 15-stage cascades was initially used with the new, 17-stage cascades, it would wind up being too slow, resulting in an “overshoot” of the intended product level. (More centrifuges, more separative work, not enough UF6 gas, basically. Call it reflux by default.) In this scenario, which ISIS considers “likely,” the operators might have discovered their mistake when withdrawing samples, which would have spread the suspect traces. Whoops!

I haven’t done the math, but it makes a certain sense. Then again, Iran started using enlarged, 174-centrifuge cascades to produce “up to 20%” enriched uranium at Qom on Dec. 14, 2011. Would the first suspect traces only have emerged a full two months later, on Feb. 15, 2012? No samples taken, containers switched, etc., before then? What’s more, Iran had already been trying out a few 174-machine cascades at Natanz. You’d think they would have worked out these sorts of issues. I suppose one never knows.

Unfortunately, there are always darker possibilities. Like cross-contamination from another, still-clandestine enrichment plant. But 27% enriched HEU is close enough to the “up to 20%” enriched material expected at Qom that this explanation isn’t exactly one that leaps out and whacks you over the head.

Long story short: don’t panic just yet.

Postscript. By now, this issue may have been overshadowed by the hardening of Iran’s negotiating position. In the best case, it will turn out that nuclear diplomacy is also subject to over-enrichment and time transients. Let’s hope for the best…

North Korea’s ICBM Unveiled

By joshua | 15 April 2012 | 140 Comments

[Updates have been transposed to the end of the post. -Ed.]

Tal Inbar points out these photos from today’s military parade in Pyongyang.

More details after the jump.

Those are two three-stage missiles carried on large, eight-axle vehicles. YTN describes them as being about 18 m long and about 2 m in diameter. [Note: based on an examination of the photographs, the 2 m diameter figure does not appear to be accurate if the missile is 18 m long.]  That’s much smaller than the TD-2 — not bigger, as the Chosun Ilbo had claimed. (Really, who could imagine a mobile missile almost half the length of a football field?)

An earlier YTN broadcast, aired before the parade, called the new missile by the name KN-08. That report is summarized in English by AFP here.

Further reading: My article of last week at 38North.org on the unveiling of North Korea’s ICBM. Here at ACW, a discussion of the implications for missile defense — or, depending on your point of view, lack thereof.

Update | April 15, 10:19 am. An alert reader points out this CCTV broadcast. Going by the serial numbers, there were more than two ICBMs on parade. I see five: 904830216, 901010212, 904830218, 904830215, and 901010418. [See also below. -Ed.]

Update | April 15, 11:10 pm. Here are a couple more views of the new missile.

Update | April 17, 2012, 10:50 pm. Thanks to alert reader “AP,” who found a video of the entire parade as broadcast on Chinese television, we can see that six of the new missiles were displayed at the end of the parade. All appear in the shot simultaneously at 68:39.

Update | April 17, 2012, 11:59 pm. There’s been a fair amount of discussion in the comments of the source of the TEL. It’s pretty clearly a local hybrid built onto an extra-heavy chassis of the sort produced exclusively by the Hubei Sanjiang Space Wanshan Special Vehicle Co., Ltd., part of the China Sanjiang Space group, and a subsidiary of  the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), a state-owned enterprise. The most likely candidate appears to be Wanshan’s WS51200 chassis, which you can see in this nice illustration:

The CASIC website announced a sale worth 30 million yuan to an unnamed foreign customer in Oct. 2010. In August 2011, the Wanshan website announced a delivery of 122-ton WS51200s to an unnamed customer, dated May 17. “During the inspection of this delivery, the consumer was very satisfied with the vehicle and indicated the possible of the next cooperation.”

Thanks to all the commenters and lurkers who have unraveled this and other threads in this post.

Iran’s Neutron Initiator Test at Parchin?

By joshua | 14 April 2012 | 46 Comments

Paul-Anton Krueger, who often seems intent on seizing the fallen mantle of Mark Hibbs, has advanced the story of Iran’s R&D activities at Parchin. His article in Saturday’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung – just in time for the talks in Istanbul — redeems this blogger’s foolish promise to post something about weaponization in Iran. It’s not an explosive story, but rather implosive: its subject is an alleged implosion test at Parchin in 2003, shortly before what’s believed to have been the suspension of Iran’s nuclear-weapons research. Whether and under what conditions the IAEA can visit the pertinent area at Parchin has been a subject of some dispute lately.

To make a long story short, Krueger reports that the research may have involved a neutron initiator. That’s a device that sparks a chain reaction in an implosion-type nuclear warhead. The subject isn’t completely new: the IAEA has reported on activities related to neutron initiators in Iran before. What’s new about this story is how it links three previously unconnected elements: implosion at Parchin, neutron initiation, and the assassination of nuclear scientists in the streets of Tehran.

Unfortunately for most of us, SZ appears only in German, and most of it never goes online. (You could always grab a copy during your next stopover in Munich, right?) In this case, there’s an abbreviated version of the story at the website. In German.

But guess what? You’re in luck. A translation of the complete article as it appears in the newspaper follows. Yeah. You’re welcome.

[start of translation]

Sueddeutsche Zeitung

April 14, 2012

Nuclear Grill-lighter

Iran has apparently tested a neutron initiator, an important component in a nuclear warhead

By Paul-Anton Krueger

Munich – A metal cylinder the size of a semi-trailer is expected to be the yardstick of Iran’s actual readiness to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the coming weeks. During visits to Tehran, IAEA’s chief inspector Herman Nackaerts has repeatedly insisted upon being allowed to examine the chamber, which was probably built in the year 2000 at the Parchin military base, 20 km [12 mi.] southeast of Tehran. The IAEA suspects that Iran conducted research there for the development of a nuclear warhead. An inspection would show the world that Iran is cooperating with the investigation into what the IAEA delicately calls the “possible military dimensions” of its nuclear program.

Diplomats posted to Vienna where the IAEA is headquartered said that Nackaerts selected Parchin because he thought it would be relatively easy for Tehran to grant his team access there. The inspectors avoid making requests based on information from intelligence services, which Iran often dismisses as forgeries, if the IAEA cannot share the original documents. They have their own sources, having interviewed Vyacheslav Danilenko, a scientist from the former Soviet nuclear weapons laboratory Chelyabinsk-70, who is said to have helped Iran to build the cylinder, a test chamber inside which it is possible to experiment with high explosives, as well as the ignition mechanisms of nuclear weapons.

So far, the government in Tehran has resisted the request. Formally, Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA Ali Asgar Soltanieh has done so by insisting that Iran and the IAEA first establish modalities of inspection; in this connection, he has proposed a number of conditions that the inspectors find unacceptable.

However, there is apparently another explanation for Iran’s tough stance. Some diplomats, intelligence officials, and independent experts believe that Nackaerts has stirred up a hornet’s nest. They suspect that Iran used the cylinder to test a neutron initiator, a key component for a nuclear warhead. This experiment could have hardly any civil application. It would be difficult for the Islamic Republic to explain, since its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has rejected nuclear weapons as “un-Islamic” and maintains that they are interested only in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

A neutron initiator can be compared to a grill-lighter: just as it kindles the fire in a pile of charcoal, neutrons initiate fission in a nuclear warhead. The resulting chain reaction releases tremendous energy – a flash of light, deadly heat, and a tremendous blast, as well as radiation. However, for the ignition to work, several processes must occur within a split second in the proper sequence. In an implosion warhead, an arrangement of explosives and other components compresses a spherical core of highly enriched uranium so much that the metal becomes liquid. The neutron initiator, which is embedded in the center of the core, is simultaneously activated by the immense pressure.

The IAEA stated in its report of November 2011 that it has received information indicating that Iran has worked on such a neutron initiator, and may have tested it – but without establishing a direct connection to Parchin or the metal cylinder. However, a person associated with a Western intelligence agency told Sueddeutsche Zeitung that the IAEA has been presented with “solid evidence” that Iran had conducted this type of secret experiment there. Another source from a different Western country stated, “That’s just what Nackaerts suspects.” The IAEA declined to comment and merely referred to their reports.

The experiment – or experiments – would have taken place in the year 2003 under the direction of two Iranian scientists who were the targets of simultaneous bomb attacks in Tehran on November 29, 2010. An assassin on a motorcycle fastened a bomb to the car of physics professor Majid Shahriari during the morning rush hour, killing him. His colleague Fereydun Abbasi-Davani narrowly escaped an assassination attempt perpetrated in the same way, escaping from his car with his wife; both sustained injuries in the explosion. Iran accused Israel and the United States of being behind the attacks. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appointed Abbasi-Davani as the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and as one of his own deputies in February 2011.

According to intelligence-service information, the two scientists were at Parchin as project managers partly responsible for developing a special array of neutron detectors and installing it outside of the test chamber. It was used during an experiment to see whether the neutron initiator worked, releasing sufficient particles. In addition, a flash x-ray camera was installed that would capture the implosion of the test system in the metal cylinder at very high resolution. The data from both sources combined allow an assessment of whether the ignition mechanism for a nuclear warhead would work.

According to intelligence sources, two other scientists whose identities are known to the IAEA assisted Shahriari and Abbassi-Davani. Mohammed Reza Sedighi Saber, allegedly an expert from the Ministry of Defense, was entrusted with the simulation and computer-assisted analysis of the experiment. According to this information, Ali-Reza Mola Heidar, an expert on instrumentation, contributed to the development of the flash x-ray system and the positioning of the neutron detectors.

Since the experiment took place about ten years ago, it is unclear whether IAEA inspectors would find anything at Parchin. The neutron initiator itself consists of a few grams of nuclear materials. Traces of it would still be detectable, provided that the cylinder is still inside the building and has not been thoroughly cleaned. Although IAEA Director-General Yukia Amano did not confirm reports about cleanup work at the military base, he spoke in this context about “information about activity that has taken place there.”

Diplomats consider the clarification of the incident at Parchin to be very important, because the development of the neutron initiator is one of three areas in which Iran is said to have continued research and development activities after 2003. At that time, according to the estimate of the U.S. intelligence community, the country suspended its program for the actual creation of nuclear weapons. An inspection at Parchin “would be a very nice confidence-building step,” one European diplomat said, referring to the nuclear talks this Saturday in Istanbul.

[end of translation]

For further reading: The IAEA’s November 2011 report, GOV/2011/65, which contains a lengthy annex on “possible military dimensions,” is here. ISIS has published repeatedly about the events at Parchin (see here, here, here, and here). According to Michael Adler at AOL, ISIS has a report in draft on the same subject as the article above. Jeffrey previously blogged about suspected neutron initiation experiments in Iran. Mark Fitzpatrick wrote about the diplomacy of Parchin at ForeignPolicy.com. I translated one of Paul’s previous stories about Iran.

Can GMD Stop North Korea’s ICBMs?

By joshua | 11 April 2012 | 59 Comments

Update | April 14, 9:46 pm. AFP reports that South Korean news channel YTN has described a series of four static engine tests earlier this year for what it calls North Korea’s KN-08 ICBM. Dong-a Ilbo reported on a static engine test late last year. Korean speakers can view the YTN video and read the transcript.

My article on North Korea’s emerging ICBM force is now online at 38North.org. (As always, these are my personal views only.) Go read it first. The bottom line is, we have bigger problems than the upcoming TD-2 launch.

It’s striking that Pyongyang, which presumably cannot afford to build a large fleet of intercontinental missiles, has opted to pursue the ICBM course in the face of the American missile defense deployment in Alaska and California (the Ground-based Midcourse Defense, or GMD). That decision implies some real confidence in North Korea’s countermeasure technology.

Creating effective countermeasures is not necessarily trivial; then again, it’s probably much less of a challenge than building the main components of a working ICBM in the first place. Just how much help the North Koreans received in this area in the 1990s from scientists and engineers at Russia’s Makeyev Design Bureau – the source of R-27 technology – remains unknown. However, the 2010 BMDR Report reported that “proliferators” were deploying countermeasures, and treated “the transfer of advanced capabilities” from other countries as a serious and ongoing problem.

One possible response to the appearance of the new North Korean ICBM, whenever it is finally deemed operational, will be to leave current missile defense deployments unchanged, on the grounds that they anticipated the new development. This stance would be consistent with the claims of two administrations that the GMD system is capable of defending America against the emerging threat.

Another approach – one urged by Rep. Michael Turner in recent HASC hearings – will be to add more interceptors. But if existing interceptors can’t beat the countermeasures, adding more units won’t help. Only if the North Koreans were try to overcome missile defense through sheer numbers of weapons, not though countermeasures, would there be grounds for a numerical strategy.

Against a limited but relatively sophisticated threat, quality counts much more than quantity. It’s risky to put too much faith in sheer numbers.

A Public Service Announcement

By joshua | 23 February 2012 | 4 Comments

Now hear this.

If you haven’t already discovered Restricted Data, Alex Wellerstein’s steadily more remarkable blog on the history of (secrecy in) the nuclear age,* then you’re late to the party.

Sorry — nothing terribly clever to say at the moment. I’ll resist the temptation to highlight one or two items, as it would take me all evening to choose. Just go and read.

That is all.

* Mostly in America.

NB. The image above comes from one of Alex’s other websites.

AQ Khan and India at CEIP

By joshua | 24 January 2012 | 24 Comments

A fun time was had by all yesterday morning at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, DC,  where I presented my research on AQ Khan and his fourth customer. (Well, perhaps there might have been a few stony faces out there.) George Perkovich moderated. I’m grateful for all of his compliments, starting with the invitation itself.

There was an overflow crowd. It was a rare treat to see a classroom’s worth of middies in attendance — plus, if my eyes did not deceive me, one or two cadets.

For those who couldn’t make it, the video is now online. The whole thing runs just under an hour and a half, including the Q&A. See if you can’t spot the cameo appearance by Pollack the Elder!

Update | Jan. 25. Global Security Newswire’s Rachel Oswald has covered the event. Some highlights on the policy front:

Any serious suspicions by other governments that New Delhi conducted nuclear weapons technology deals with the Khan ring could negatively impact India’s chances of concluding new atomic trade agreements with nations such as Japan and Australia or winning membership to the exclusive Nuclear Suppliers Group, [Pollack] asserted….

Indian purchases of nuclear weapons technology on the black market would not necessarily constitute a breach of any international commitments, Pollack said. New Delhi is not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and is still in the midst of an effort to join several other arms control regimes.

India’s reputation as country that does not engage in nuclear proliferation has been central to its negotiation of civilian atomic cooperation pacts with foreign governments that would otherwise have balked at trading with a nuclear-armed state that has not signed the NPT accord.

Should Japan or Australia put credence in the suspicions that India was Khan’s fourth customer, it could make the two countries ̵