Free Republic

Rosetta's lander lasted just 60 hours on a comet after it bounced into the dark shadows of a cliff, where its solar panels couldn't power the vehicle. Why didn't it carry a more reliable power source, say a nuclear battery like one that's unfailingly fueled Voyager for decades? It's a simple question with a fascinating answer, one that begins with the Cold War and ends with the future space exploration. When it comes to space travel, plutonium-238 is the perfect fuel: long-lasting and, as I'll explain later, relatively safe. Without it, we have no hope of going much further than...

The Islamic State (ISIS) militants claimed on Twitter that they had the 'dirty bomb' and had 'terror' plans for London, confirming fears raised by the United Nations(UN) back in July. Several ISIS affiliate accounts made the claim in the last few days that the militant group had the capacity to make the ' Bomb' using 40kg of Uranium that the group 'stole' from the Mosul University some four months ago. The details of the 'dirty bomb' emerged recently after the ISIS fighters boasted on Twitter of the chaos they could wreck in London. A "dirty bomb" is a type of...

While the future of Iran’s nuclear program has rightly been the focus of the intense Vienna negotiations, there are other significant implications extending well beyond Tehran. Because of President Obama’s many concessions, Iran has made significant gains, particularly enhanced international legitimacy for both its regime and its extensive nuclear activities. Now that the negotiating “deadline” has been extended until June 2015, we should consider the broader global implications of Mr. Obama’s Iran policy. Other aspiring nuclear-weapons states have carefully followed the negotiations, drawing conclusions and making plans accordingly. Very shortly, the wider ripples of the talks will manifest themselves in...

The Economist removed a cartoon from an article on its internet edition that has been characterized as anti-Semitic. The cartoon was removed Tuesday from the weekly publication, where it ran alongside an article published on Jan. 18. The cartoon appears in the print edition of the magazine. An editor’s note appended at the end of the article titled “Negotiating with Iran: A Big Gap to Close,” about the difficulties between the United States and Iran over negotiating changes to Iran’s nuclear program, read: “The print edition of this story had a cartoon which inadvertently caused offense to some readers, so...

President Obama has been obsessed with Iran Monday, November 24, is the deadline for the negotiations between Iran and the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China regarding its program to build its own nuclear weapons to conclude. At this writing, whether the negotiations will be extended or not is unknown, but it seems unlikely. President Obama has been obsessed with Iran, seeking to change its hostility by finding an answer to the problem its nuclear weapon program represents. That is typical of his “magical thinking” whereby something he wants is automatically assumed to be accessible. In the case...

Russia certainly thinks so. Their new round of nuclear weapons, their new aggressive posture and their new spurning of joint nuclear programs with the United States, all point to a disconcerting trend in Russian thinking. Americans have short memories. Russians don’t. It’s only been 25 years since the Wall came down, but in Russia’s mind the Cold War didn’t end. If Russia’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t enough of a heads-up, then maybe their new generation of tactical nuclear weapons is. That’s right – new tactical nuclear weapons - as in “yeah, we might use them since their only tactical.” No...

Obama must quit his pen-palling habit with the Iranian regime's supreme leader, and make the right choice by adopting a tough stance against the Iranian regime and its allies and proxies in the region With the specter of the November 24 deadline looming on the horizon, a tough and determined position toward Iran is essential in saving the day. But President Barack Obama seems to be poised on repeating his previous mistakes in dealing with the Iranian regime. That is what his latest letter to the Iranian regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei indicates, in which he made cooperation with Iran...

Obama’s obsession with an Iranian "deal" and his domestic and foreign policy decisions reveal a man who has been judged by the voters to be unfit, mentally and intellectually, to be President. On November 4, 1979, as part of the Iranian revolution that overthrew the Shah, a group of “students” seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took sixty of our diplomats hostage. They held them for 444 days until the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President. Every year since then Iran has celebrated that date as a national holiday. What does that tell you about how its...

President Obama has no compunctions about thumbing his nose at Congress and countenancing vile insults hurled by his senior lackeys against Israel’s prime minister. But he appears willing to trust one proven liar and aggressor, Putin The Obama administration is so desperate to reach a nuclear deal with Iran by the current deadline of November 24th that it is willing to trust Russia to play a key implementation role. In the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s duplicity with regard to Ukraine and Putin’s increasingly aggressive stance towards the West that harkens back to the Cold War, the Obama administration...

Russia is moving tactical nuclear weapons systems into recently-annexed Crimea while the Obama administration is backing informal talks aimed at cutting U.S. tactical nuclear deployments in Europe. Three senior House Republican leaders wrote to President Obama two weeks ago warning that Moscow will deploy nuclear missiles and bombers armed with long-range air launched cruise missiles into occupied Ukrainian territory. “Locating nuclear weapons on the sovereign territory of another state without its permission is a devious and cynical action,” states the letter signed by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R., Calif.) and two subcommittee chairmen....

Obama simply does not get it or refuses to do so. His failure puts us closer to a nuclear cataclysm with every passing day The President’s lack of attention and indifference to years of intelligence reports and analysis is leading to a potential horror in which Iran fulfills its quest to make its own nuclear weapons. It already has the missile capacity to deliver them throughout the Middle East and to Europe. On October 6th Secretary of State John Kerry received a letter signed by 354 members of the House of Representatives that said in part “We are concerned that...

“In short, there is a new Cold War in progress, with our old adversaries back in the game, more powerful than they have been for decades, and with America more confused and tentative than it has been since the Carter years.”

Why prospects for cooperation with the Islamic Republic look dimmer than ever. On Thursday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani addressed the United Nations in a replete with anti-Western sentiments, anti-Semitism, tiresome tropes regarding the genesis of terror, and promises to continue pursuing his nation’s nuclear program. While acknowledging that terror had become a global issue, Rouhani sought to put the blame everywhere else. “Today’s anti-Westernism is the offspring of yesterday’s colonialism,” Rouhani insisted, proceeding to take a none-too-subtle shot at America, noting that “certain intelligence agencies have put blades in the hands of madmen, who now spare no one.”

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A sprawling new plant here in a former soybean field makes the mechanical guts of America’s atomic warheads. Bigger than the Pentagon, full of futuristic gear and thousands of workers, the plant, dedicated last month, modernizes the aging weapons that the United States can fire from missiles, bombers and submarines. It is part of a nationwide wave of atomic revitalization that includes plans for a new generation of weapon carriers. A recent federal study put the collective price tag, over the next three decades, at up to a trillion dollars. This expansion comes under a president...

The majority of Russia’s ICBMs are reaching the end of their service life, meaning that the deployment and modernization of current and new missiles is crucial to maintaining Russia’s nuclear capabilities. Currently, a majority of Russia’s ICBM consists of older SS-18, SS-19 and SS-25 ICBMs which have been in service since the USSR. Russia is set to replace these older missiles with newer and more advanced 108 RS-24 Yars-M (SS-29), Topol-Ms (SS-27)(mobile and silo-based), as well as 30 SS-19 in nine divisions by 2016. ICBMs are not the only part of Russia’s attempts to retain its nuclear posture. ICBMs form...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Next week’s referendum on Scottish independence has largely flown under the radar screen here in the United States. The cable news networks have devoted little attention so far to the issue, as the Isil threat in the Middle East continues to dominate international coverage. There has been no polling conducted on the Scottish question in the US, and it is doubtful that many Americans outside of the Washington policy bubble or the financial milieu of New York are particularly exercised by the outcome of a vote taking place over 3,000 miles away. They should be concerned, however. What happens in...

Kiev has received threats of nuclear retaliation from Russia through unofficial channels if it continues to fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian Minister of Defence, Valeriy Heletey, announced on his Facebook page on Monday. “The Russian side has threatened on several occasions across unofficial channels that, in the case of continued resistance they are ready to use a tactical nuclear weapon against us,” Heletey’s statement reads. The minister goes on to say that Russia’s “hybrid war” in Ukraine is at an end, accusing the Kremlin of attempting a “full-scale invasion”. Heletey called for all Ukrainian forces to “consolidate”...

The USA fired its last above-ground nuclear test at a test site in Nevada on this day, 17 July, in 1962. The operation was a culmination exercise that brought together nuclear warhead tests (code-named Little Feller, as a nod to the W54 warhead’s light weight and low yield) and nuclear weapons employment maneuvers code-named Ivy Flats. The test was a pretty-much full-spectrum test of an actual tactical nuke, and a very unusual one — a nuclear infantry weapon called the Davy Crockett. A lot of tripe is written about the Davy Crockett, including that it could not fire a projectile...

Iraqi ‘Terrorist Groups’ Have Seized Nuclear Materials Stephanie Burnett @stephy_burnett July 10, 2014 Approximately 88 pounds of uranium compounds stored at an Iraq university have been taken, though they are likely unenriched and so difficult to make weapons from Iraq has told the U.N. that Islamist insurgents have seized nuclear materials used for scientific research from Mosul University in northern Iraq, according to Reuters. Approximately 88 pounds (40 kilograms) of uranium compounds were stored at the university, wrote Iraq’s U.N. Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on July 8.

India's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is widely expected to win India's parliamentary elections, the first round of which began on Monday. India is the largest democracy in the world, and so national elections are helpd in separate regions over a five-week period. Self-described Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) Narendra Modi is the head of BJP, and he's promising a substantially more aggressive foreign policy for India, including a promise to get tougher in territorial disputes with China. He's the "hope and change" candidate for this election, and he's expected to become the next prime minister. Modi is also promising to review India's...