Are U.S. nuclear weapons less secure than Pakistan's?

[Douglas Caddy]

Pakistan learns the US nuclear way

By Zia Mian

AsiaTimes

December 19, 2007

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IL19Df02.html

The United States recently admitted that since the attacks of September 11, 2001, it has been helping Pakistan secure its nuclear weapons and the materials used to make them. Pakistan has welcomed this assistance. A former Pakistani general who was involved in the nuclear weapons complex has said that "we want to learn from the West's best practices".

But the US track record for securing its own nuclear weapons, nuclear materials and weapons information isn't encouraging, to say the least. If the United States can't secure its own nuclear complex, why expect Pakistan to do it any better?

On November 11, The Washington Post reported that the United States sent "tens of millions of dollars worth of equipment such as intrusion detectors and ID systems to safeguard Pakistan's nuclear weapons". A week later, The New York Times, which had been sitting on the story for three years, revealed that the program was in fact much larger, "Over the past six years, the Bush administration has spent almost $100 million on a highly classified program to help General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, secure his country's nuclear weapons." The assistance ranged from "helicopters to night-vision goggles to nuclear detection equipment".

The US military claims to be confident about the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. A Pentagon press spokesman said, "At this point, we have no concerns. We believe that they are under the appropriate control." The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff declared, "I don't see any indication right now that security of those weapons is in jeopardy."

Zero locks

A concern about nuclear weapons security in Pakistan is that Islamists in the military may seize control of the weapons and try to use them. Pakistan claims to have followed the US example and installed coded combination-lock switches, known as Permissive Action Links, on its weapons.

Since the 1960s, most US nuclear weapons are supposed to have been protected against unauthorized use by coded combination-lock switches that could only be activated by someone who knew that proper sequence of characters. These switches were introduced in 1962 by Robert McNamara when he was secretary of defense to ensure control over the use of US nuclear weapons.

According to Bruce Blair, a former missile launch control officer, Strategic Air Command, which was responsible for the nuclear-armed missiles and bombers, installed the switches but set the combinations of all the locks to a string of zeros. The codes for launching US nuclear missiles apparently stayed set at 00000000 until the late 1970s. The reason? Strategic Air Command did not want there to be any problems or delays in launching the nuclear missiles caused by a more complex set of numbers.

McNamara apparently did not know that the locks he had ordered to be installed on nuclear weapons were largely worthless, and that the military with direct control of the weapons were evading official instructions for securing nuclear missiles. He only learned of this from Blair in January 2004. McNamara was outraged. But, as Blair observed, this is but "one of a long litany of items pointing to the ignorance of presidents and defense secretaries and other nuclear security officials about the true state of nuclear affairs".

Wayward nukes

Problems with securing nuclear weapons are not a matter of Cold War history. In August this year, six US nuclear-armed cruise missiles were inadvertently loaded onto a bomber at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and flown across the country to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. The cruise missiles remained fitted to the bomber for 24 hours before it took off and for hours after it landed without anyone realizing that it was carrying nuclear warheads. It was "an unprecedented string of procedural failures", according to General Richard Newton, the assistant deputy chief of staff for operations for the US Air Force.

As nuclear analyst Hans Kristensen has pointed out, the incident showed "the apparent break-down of nuclear command and control for the custody of the nuclear weapons". Put simply, the ground crews did not know, or bother to check, that they were loading nuclear weapons on a plane; the bomber's pilot and crew did not know or bother to check that they were carrying nuclear weapons; the respective base commanders did not know nuclear weapons were leaving or arriving; and, the national authorities responsible for nuclear weapons did not know where these nuclear weapons were or that they were being moved across the country. The weapons were to all intents and purposes lost for about 36 hours.

Gates, guards and guns

A key concern about nuclear security in Pakistan is the risk of radical Islamist militants making a bid for its nuclear weapons or its stock of the materials with which to make nuclear weapons. There is a growing armed insurgency in the areas bordering Afghanistan that has been spreading across Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province and into its major cities.

The United States, which has much less of a threat to worry about, has had plenty of problems trying to makes sure terrorists could not get their hands on the materials with which to make nuclear weapons. The US Department of energy currently spends $1.3 billion a year on securing its facilities that contain significant amounts of nuclear weapons-useable materials through the use of fences, guards, cameras, intrusion sensors, and so on. But many of these facilities are not required or able to protect against a 19-strong group of attackers such as were involved in the September 11, 2001, aircraft hijackings.

The failure to secure weapons materials at US facilities has been exposed by exercises in which simulated attackers carried away material sufficient to make a weapon. Reports show that the security at the sites fails more than 50% of the time. The Project on Government Oversight, an independent watch dog group, has revealed for instance that during a mock attack on Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, a US Special Forces team "was able to steal enough weapons-grade uranium for numerous nuclear weapons". In a subsequent security test at the same site, the "mock terrorists gained control of sensitive nuclear materials which, if detonated, would have endangered significant parts of New Mexico, Colorado and downwind areas".

Nuclear know-how

A particular worry about Pakistan is that scientists and engineers within its nuclear program may share weapons information with other countries or Islamist groups. The story of Abdul Qadeer Khan is all too familiar, as is that of several senior former Pakistani nuclear scientists who were found to have met with the al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan.

In the United States, there is a long and troubling history of nuclear weapons information going missing from the nuclear weapons laboratories, and ending up in unexpected places. The first and most famous atomic spy was Klaus Fuchs, who passed on the secrets of the US nuclear weapons project to the Soviet Union during World War II. Fuchs claimed he did it for ideological reasons.

More recently, the Project on Government Oversight has compiled a list of reports on the loss of classified information from the US nuclear complex. They found 17 incidents in 2004 alone in which classified information from Los Alamos was sent using unclassified networks. This led the Department of Energy, which manages the U.S. nuclear weapons program, to shut down all operations involving removable hard drives, laptops, CDs and DVDs, flash drives and such like, across the entire complex.

In one dramatic case, missing computer disks containing nuclear weapons information were lost and mysteriously found several weeks later behind a copy machine. In another case, classified information about nuclear weapons designs was found during a raid on a drug den. In January 2007, there was an incident in which a highly classified email message about nuclear weapons was sent unsecured by a senior Pentagon nuclear adviser and then forwarded by others. It has been described as "the most serious breach of US national security".

Nuclear people

History suggests that the most enduring problem for the security of nuclear weapons, materials and information, is the people who work in and manage the nuclear weapons complex. The United States has a nuclear weapons personnel reliability program which screens people who are allowed to work with nuclear weapons. Pakistan says it has adopted a similar program.

An independent study of the US nuclear personnel reliability program found that between 1975 and 1990, the United States disqualified annually between 3% and 5% of the military personnel it had previously cleared for working with nuclear weapons. These people were removed on the grounds of drug or alcohol problems, conviction for a serious crime, negligence, unreliability or aberrant behavior, poor attitude, and behavior suggesting problems with law and authority.

Problems like this continue. In October 2006, a Los Alamos lab worker with the "highest possible security clearance" was arrested in a cocaine drug bust. One year later, the commander of a US nuclear submarine was removed from his duties after it was discovered that the ship's crew failed to do daily safety checks on its nuclear reactor for a month and then falsified the daily records to cover up the lapse.

False security

After 60 years of living with the bomb, the United States has failed to get its own nuclear house in order. It continues to suffer serious problems with securing its own nuclear weapons, nuclear materials and weapons-related information. Showing no sign of having learned from its own mistakes, the United States may only end up encouraging a false sense of security and confidence about nuclear weapons security in Pakistan.

The only sure way to secure nuclear weapons and materials is not to have them. The only way to be sure that nuclear weapons scientists do not pass information is to forbid scientists from working on such weapons. Anything short of that is taking a risk and being willing to pay the price for living in a nuclear-armed world.

Zia Mian, a Foreign Policy In Focus columnist, directs the Project on Peace and Security in South Asia at the Program on Science and Global Security, at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs.

(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus)

[William Kelly]

Here's an article I've been working on along these lines. I don't know about Pakistan, but the most serious nuclear threat isn't from third world nukes or terrorits, but accidents and idiots. - BK

The DOD report on nuclear weapons accidents concludes "the increased numbers of nuclear weapons suggest that more accidents and perhaps more serious accidents will occur in the future."

WMD IN MY BACKYARD – By William Kelly

The search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq and Iran may have come up empty, but from where I'm sitting in the middle of New Jersey, there's seems to be plenty of WMD right here in my backyard.

I don't have to go far to find such WMDs as missing mice infected with biological warfare diseases, unaccounted for vials of liquid anthrax, a nuke missile meltdown site and a few nuclear warheads gone missing offshore.

It's all right here, either in New Jersey, or in the case of the nukes, just offshore. I couldn't make this up, and we don't need no terrorist to do it to us, it seems we shoot ourselves in the foot.

Not long ago, as detailed in the local news, vials of anthrax were found missing, along with three bubonic plague infested mice at the College of New Jersey, whose top administrators had left in disgrace because of other scandals.

Then there's the BOMARC missile meltdown at McGuire Air Force Base, complete with nuclear warheads, what they call a "Broken Arrow" incident, which polluted the nearby ground and water, the aquafier that many people drink from.

Know any terrorists looking for some nuclear warheads? There's two unaccounted for in the water a few miles off Cape May, New Jersey. They were jetsoned from a military cargo plane out of Dover AFB in Delaware, jettisoned during an emergency shortly after takeoff, and never recovered.

Missing mice and anthrax, a "broken arrow" missile meltdown, nuke warheads missing offshore, we got it all. And each case study is a lesson in accidents that can get out of control. The most recent are the stories of the missing mice and anthrax.

MISSING INFECTED MICE AND ANTHRAX

Three bubonic plague infested mice went missing from a government lab in Newark in September, 2005, and not long after that, two-two inch tubes of liquid anthrax bacteria were reported unaccounted for at the New Jersey Public Health Environmental Laboratory in Trenton.

According to the Associated Press (Wayne Parry, Aril 26, 2006), "The mice were never located, and officials said the rodents might have been stolen, eaten by other lab animals or just misplaced in a paperwork error." The three toxic mice were absent from their Newark lab affiliated with the University of Medicine and Denistry, where a scandal even more pressing than the missing mice forced the resignation of the director and sparked a federal financial probe.

"The Newark lab that lost track of the plague-infested mice conducts bioterrorism research for the federal government," Wayne Parry Reported. "After the incident, the facility improved its video surveillance and stopped using contracted animal handlers. Before the incident, the center relied on a single security guard."

The anthrax, kept at a more secure facility, was discovered missing during an inventory of more than 19,000 samples stored in a state laboratory, prior to their being relocated to an even more secure facility. 350 of 352 positive anthrax samples are accounted for. According to Lauren O. Kidd of the Gannett newspapers, "The state is obliged by the FBI to store the positive samples as potential evidence if a suspect is charged in connection to the unsolved anthrax attacks that killed five and harmed at least 17 in October 2001. The U.S. Postal Service requires the state to store the thousands of negative samples as well, officials said."

"In both cases, authorities say they think the items in question weren't actually lost, but were simply unaccounted for due to clerical errors," wrote Parry.

"It is likely that the discrepancy is an inventory or clerical error and not truly missing samples," said state epidemiologist Eddy Bresnitz.

Rutgers University microbiologist Richard Ebright said, "The fact that they don't know the answer means they're not running a properly secured facility. The odds are that it was an accounting error, but it is very possible that one of the persons with access to the lab has removed the material."

Of the 300 institutions in the country capable of safely handling such materials, 16,500 individuals are certified and cleared to handle and possess deadly bio-agents, and only eleven people have such clearance at the Trenton lab where the anthrax was stored. All were questioned and cleared.

"The Trenton lab has multiple levels of security," writes Parry, "including a padlocked containment area requiring two different sets of identification for access,…video monitoring and 24-hour security guards."

"Samples of anthrax have been stored at a Trenton lab since shortly after the October 2001 anthrax mailings that went through a Hamilton (N.J.) post office, killing four people across the country and sickening 17."

"The chance that these two positive specimens are somewhere outside of the laboratory is very small," said Bresnitz, noting the missing anthrax is, "not in a mode that we think could be used as weapons. The spores would have to be put into an aerosol form to be used as a weapon, which would take a high level of technical sophistication."

Well, we know who has a high level of technical sophistication. As Rutgers professor Ebright says, "If an adversary of the United States, such as al-Quada, wanted to obtain this material, the most effective, simple procedure to do so is to plant a person in one of those numerous institutions that the administration has put in place working with this material. Because the number of those institutions has increased and because it happened without an increase in effective security, the risk to the United States has dramatically increased."

Not rare in New Jersey, we apparently have an abundance of anthrax, as New Jersey's Homeland Security director Richard Canas said, "I think the genesis was that they were inundated with samples. What I would like to see is bringing this number down. Let's at least cull these down into something more manageable."

Indeed. And if you see three lose mice running around that glow in the dark, please notify the office of Homeland Security that you found their missing rodents.

Then there's the nuke missile meltdown, a "Broken Arrow" event.

BOMARC Missle Meltdown. June 7, 1960

The United States was in the midst of the Cold War in early June, 1960, when major cities and military bases were surrounded by batteries of anti-missile missiles, poised to be launched to defend the country against jet bomber or thermonuclear missile attack.

The BOMARC – was one such anti-missile system, and a battery of them were set up on the east edge of McGuire Air Force base in middle of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Surrounded by scub pine forests, a public nature preserve was just across the two lane blacktop highway from the line of missiles nestled in the woods.

The idea behind shooting a nuclear warhead as a defensive weapon depended upon an advance notice being given to launch the anti-missile missles so they could detonate high in the atmosphere and take out the incoming bombers and missiles with them.

Set to be launched on two minutes notice, the BOMARC missiles were poised skyward, set in a row a few hundred yards apart. On June 7, 1960, a helium tank under high pressure exploded on one of the missiles, rupturing the fuel tank that caught fire.

It is what they call a "Broken Arrow" event, or "any accidental or unauthorized incident involving a possible detonation of a nuclear weapon by U.S. Forces (other than war risk); the non-nuclear detonation or burning of a nuclear weapon; radioactive contamination; the seizure, theft or loss of a nuclear weapon or component (including jettisoning); public hazard, actual or implied."

While McGuire AFB is now the home base to the state of New Jersey's nuclear response strike team, they were a little less sophisticated in 1960.

The first responders were the local, mainly volunteer fire and rescue squads from the nearby town of New Egypt, in Ocean County, who reacted to the explosion, and fought the fire with traditional firefighting weapons – high pressure water.

With the rocket's fuel feeding the fire, which burned out of control for quite a while, the nuclear tipped missile burned completely, and while there was no nuclear explosion, the fire melted the nuclear materials which, combined with the water runoff, contaminated the ground and the ground water below, which fed into a local creek.

One official report reads: Table 5-1: U.S. Nuclear Weapons Accidents, 1950-1980

June 7, 1960 / BOMARC / McGuire AFB, New Jersey

"A BOMARC air defense missile in ready storage condition (permitting launch in two minutes) was destroyed by explosion and fire after a high-pressure helium tank exploded and ruptured the missile's fuel tanks. The warhead was also destroyed by the fire although the high explosives did not detonate. Nuclear safety devices acted as designed. Contamination was restricted to an area immediately beneath the weapon and an adjacent elongated area approximately 100 feet long, caused by drain off of firefighting water.'

(p. 228).

Another source is: U.S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History, by Chuck Hansen (Orion Books, New York, N.Y., 10003, 1988.

Also see: "The Greenpeace Book of the Nuclear Age: The Hidden History, The Human Cost" by John May, (Pantheon Books, NY, NY, 1989)

While the event took place in 1960, on July 29, 1999 it was formally announced at McGuire AFB that, "Officials at McGure AFB say they have hired a South Carolina firm to clean up radioacative plutonium that leaked during a 1960 fire at a nuclear missile site. The Trentonian reported that the cleanup was announced a day after federal authorities added other McGuire dump areas to the Superfund list….but not the missile site in Plumstead Township, which was abandoned in 1972."

Under "Completed Actions," the DOD report notes that, "Following the explosion that occurred in 1960, paint was applied to the shelter and concrete was poured over the most heavily plutonium-contaminated portions of the asphalt apron and floor area of the shelter. An asphalt cover was placed in the drainage ditch that leads from the shelter to the nearby stream to impede erosion of contaminated soil. Access to the accident area is restricted by a 6 foot chain link fence topped with barb wire.

The nearby Colliers Mill Wildlife Management Area, a nature park just across the highway from the accident site, is a popular public camping and recreational park.

From what I understand, having talked with residents of the area, a local "piney" with a truck was hired to haul some of the contaminated dirt away from the site.

An extensive Public Health Assessment by the Boeing Michigan Aeronautical Research Center – of the "Broken Arrow" event at the McGuire Missile, New Egypt, Ocean County, New Jersey, concluded, "No apparent health hazards are associated with an explosion and fire at the BOMARC site in 1960, which released radionuclides to the environment via smoke, dust and water runoff from fire-fighting efforts. Workers responding to the accident, downwind at the time of the accident, or involved in cleanup may have breathed in alpha radiation when they inhaled radionuclides, primarily plutonium, carried on smoke or attached to resuspended soil, or they could have been exposed to small amounts of external gamma radiation."

The report continues, "Given the lack of information about the exposure conditions at the time of the accident, it is challenging to accurately assess workers intake and does. Conservative estimates, however, suggest that radiation does received during or after the accident are not expected to cause harmful long term effects or cancer."

Now isn't that reassuring.

Then there's the missing nukes.

NUKE WARHEADS MISSING OFFSHORE

JULY 28, 1957 – C-124 Globemaster Jettisons Cargo – 2 Plutonium-239 atomic warheads – within an area 100 miles southeast of the Naval Air Station, Pomona, N.J.

The Department of Defense has officially reported thirty-two serious accidents involving nuclear weapons, three of which occurred while transporting weapons from one place to another, using the C-124 "Globemaster" transport.

Destination Europe, the C-124 with three weapons aboard took off from Dover AFB in Delaware, but immediately began experiencing engine trouble. In order to avoid crashing into the water, the crew jettisoned two of the weapons into the water.

According to a 1981 report by the Center for Defense Information [ Washington, D.C. #0195-6450 The Defense Monitor (Vol. X. Number 5) U.S. Nuclear Weapons Accidents: Danger In Our Midst – republished by MILNET – http://www.milnet.com/cdiart.htm ]

"On July 28, 1957, a C-124 jettisoned two weapons from a C-124 aircraft. There were three weapons and one nuclear capsule on board the aircraft, though nuclear components were not installed in the weapons. Enroute from Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, "a loss of power from number one and number two engines [of four a major problem for this aircraft when carrying extremely heavy atomic bombs of this era ] was experienced. Maximum power was applied to the remaining engines; however, level flight could not be maintained. At this point, the decision was made to jettison cargo in the interest of safety of the aircraft and crew. The first weapon was jettisoned at approximately 2,500 feet altitude. No detonation occurred from either weapon. Both weapons are presumed to have been damaged from impact with the ocean surface. Both weapons are presumed to have submerged almost instantly. The ocean varies in depth in the area of the jettisonings. The C-124 landed at an airfield in the vicinity of Atlantic City, New Jersey, with the remaining weapon and the nuclear capsule aboard. A search for the weapons or debris had negative results."

[see: http://www.milnet.com/cdiart.html ]

"The weapons were jettisoned within an area 100 miles southeast of the Naval Air Station, Pomona, N.J., where the aircraft landed," the MILNET report notes. "The two weapons are still presumably in the area, somewhere east of Rehobeth Beach Delaware, Cape May and Wildwood, N.J."

Even though this incident took place in 1957, you can be sure that bombs are still there. "Plutonium-239, an isotope used to fuel atomic bombs," the report dryly notes, "has a half-life of 24,400 years and remains poisonous for at least half a million years."

The problem is, whose looking for these lost nukes? If we don't keep looking for them until they are found, then the terrorists will one day most certainly go looking for them. Or, what if their metal containers rust through and the nuclear material leaks in to the environment?

Under the DOD definition of a nuclear accident, the jettisoning of nuclear warheads is a "Broken Arrow" event # 4 – "Seizure, theft, or loss of a nuclear weapon or component (including jettisoning);" and is decidedly a "Public hazard," whether "actual or implied."

The DOD report on nuclear weapons accidents concludes "the increased numbers of nuclear weapons suggest that more accidents and perhaps more serious accidents will occur in the future."

Xxxyyyzzz

Edited December 19, 2007 by William Kelly

[Evan Burton]

I can understand the the military want to be able to react quickly, but the time of the need for an almost immediate retaliatory strike has passed. The issue now is security. Any use will be considered over a fairly long time. IMO, getting release authority for a nuke should be harder than getting the council to admit they made a mistake with a parking ticket!

[John Dolva]

"Any use will be considered over a fairly long time." - one would hope so.

Given the sociopathic tendencies of the US Presidents and Hawks over the past period, plus the fact that 11,000 advanced warheads with multiple delivery sysems making for a complex protocol, compared to 40 or so warheads in Pakistan. the proliferation of this weapon of mass destruction in the hands of the USofA military could hardly compare in any consideration re security.

[Douglas Caddy]

I can understand the the military want to be able to react quickly, but the time of the need for an almost immediate retaliatory strike has passed. The issue now is security. Any use will be considered over a fairly long time. IMO, getting release authority for a nuke should be harder than getting the council to admit they made a mistake with a parking ticket!

Nuclear Site Is Breached

South African Attack Should Sound Alarms

Washington Post

By Micah Zenko

Thursday, December 20, 2007

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...id=opinionsbox1

An underreported attack on a South African nuclear facility last month demonstrates the high risk of theft of nuclear materials by terrorists or criminals. Such a crime could have grave national security implications for the United States or any of the dozens of countries where nuclear materials are held in various states of security.

Shortly after midnight on Nov. 8, four armed men broke into the Pelindaba nuclear facility 18 miles west of Pretoria, a site where hundreds of kilograms of weapons-grade uranium are stored. According to the South African Nuclear Energy Corp., the state-owned entity that runs the Pelindaba facility, these four "technically sophisticated criminals" deactivated several layers of security, including a 10,000-volt electrical fence, suggesting insider knowledge of the system. Though their images were captured on closed-circuit television, they were not detected by security officers because nobody was monitoring the cameras at the time.

So, undetected, the four men spent 45 minutes inside one of South Africa's most heavily guarded "national key points" -- defined by the government as "any place or area that is so important that its loss, damage, disruption or immobilization may prejudice the Republic."

Eventually, the attackers broke into the emergency control center in the middle of the facility, stole a computer (which was ultimately left behind) and breached an electronically sealed control room. After a brief struggle, they shot Anton Gerber, an off-duty emergency services officer. Gerber later explained that he was hanging around because he believed (reasonably, in retrospect) that his fiancée -- a site supervisor -- was not safe at work. Although badly injured, Gerber triggered the alarm, setting off sirens and lights and alerting police stationed a few miles away.

Nevertheless, the four escaped, leaving the facility the same way they broke in.

Amazingly, at the same time those four men entered Pelindaba from its eastern perimeter, a separate group of intruders failed in an attempt to break in from the west. The timing suggests a coordinated attack against a facility that contains an estimated 25 bombs' worth of weapons-grade nuclear material. On Nov. 16, local police arrested three suspects, ranging in age from 17 to 28, in connection with this incident.

In response to the successful attack, the South African Nuclear Energy Corp. suspended six Pelindaba security personnel, including the general manager of security, and promised an "internal investigation which will cover culpability, negligence and improvements of Security Systems." It should be noted that Pelindaba's security was considered to have been upgraded after a break-in there two years ago (one individual was detained shortly after breaching the security fence).

It is still unclear why the two groups of intruders sought to break into this particular facility. More important, however, is that had the armed attackers succeeded in penetrating the site's highly enriched uranium storage vault, where the weapons-grade nuclear material is believed to be held, they could have carried away the ingredients for the world's first terrorist nuclear bomb.

As this incident shows, nuclear terrorism is a global issue, extending far beyond the familiar policy talking points of U.S. cooperation with Russia over its nuclear stockpiles, the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal in the face of threats from Islamic extremists, and concerns that if Iran acquires nuclear capabilities it could provide a bomb to sympathetic terrorist organizations.

Indeed, the essential ingredients required for making a nuclear weapon exist in more than 40 countries, in facilities with differing levels of security. Unfortunately, there are still no binding global standards on how to secure nuclear weapons and weapons-grade nuclear material. In the absence of sustained political leadership from the world's nuclear powers to develop, agree to and implement effective nuclear security standards, armed attacks such as the one at Pelindaba could become commonplace.

Micah Zenko is a research associate in the project on Managing the Atom at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The views expressed here are solely those of the author.

[William Kelly]

I guess the situation has changed, and now Pakistan's nukes are a little less secure than USA nukes.

BK

[William Kelly]

Here's a story I've been working on about a Nuke Broken Arrow event near me. -BK

http://whitedeercafe.blogspot.com/

http://whitedeercafe.blogspot.com/2009/05/...-on-bomarc.html

Edited May 22, 2009 by William Kelly

[Guest Tom Scully]

Here's a story I've been working on about a Nuke Broken Arrow event near me. -BK

http://whitedeercafe.blogspot.com/

http://whitedeercafe.blogspot.com/2009/05/...-on-bomarc.html

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/hac/PHA/boeing/boe_p2.html

Edited May 24, 2009 by Tom Scully

[William Kelly]

Here's a story I've been working on about a Nuke Broken Arrow event near me. -BK

Hey Scull, thanks for that, I missed it.

You always come up with something new.

This story is just getting started.

It seems that not only is the water drainage pipe missing, the launcher itself is unaccounted for.

More to come on this one.

BK

http://whitedeercafe.blogspot.com/

http://whitedeercafe.blogspot.com/2009/05/...-on-bomarc.html

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/hac/PHA/boeing/boe_p2.html