Free Republic

Vladimir Putin's propagandist-in-chief has threatened the West with nuclear destruction just hours after the Russian leader put his deterrent forces on alert. Speaking on nation-wide TV amid a frenzy of anti-Western rhetoric, TV anchor Dmitry Kiselyov told viewers: "Our submarines can shoot more than 500 nuclear warheads. This would guarantee destruction of the USA, and all other NATO countries. In accordance with the principle 'Why do we need the world, if Russia isn't there?' Today our Russian Nuclear Triad is on the high alert. Putin did warn [the West]. Do not try to scare Russia." In his Vesti Nedeli weekly...

WASHINGTON — An accident that occurred as a decades-old nuclear warhead was being dismantled at the government's Pantex facility near Amarillo, Texas, could have caused the device to detonate, a nonprofit organization charged Thursday. The Project on Government Oversight said the "near miss" event, which led the Energy Department to fine the plant's operator $110,000, was due partly to requirements that technicians at the plant work up to 72 hours per week. The Pantex plant, 17 miles northeast of Amarillo, is the country's only factory for assembly and disassembly of nuclear weapons. The organization said it was told by unidentified...

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump agreed on Monday to scrap a warhead weight limit on South Korea’s missiles in the wake of North Korea’s sixth nuclear test, South Korea’s presidential office said. In a separate phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin also on Monday, Moon said the U.N. Security Council should seek ways to sever North Korea’s foreign currency income, including from its workers employed abroad and oil shipments. Under the existing missile pact between the United States and South Korea, Seoul’s warheads currently face a cap of 500 kg...

Unable to post article content as it is Bloomberg sourced. Re-cap: It was a medium long-range missile, test confirms engine reliability, guidance and detonation systems.. Hwasong-12 missile could carry a “large-size heavy nuclear warhead,” per state news agency report.

At least 14 ISIS fighters were killed while filling a chemical warhead near Baghdad. The Business Standard reported, via Rantburg: At least 14 members of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group were killed Tuesday near Baghdad when a rocket whose warhead they were filling with chlorine gas exploded. Iraqi security officials said seven more IS militants were injured in the incident, which occurred near the town of al-Dhuluiya, about 90 km north of Baghdad. Al-Dhuluiya was also where four members of the Iraqi security forces and Shiite militiamen suffered symptoms of asphyxiation after inhaling chlorine gas released by two improvised...

Russia’s military carried out a flight test of a new multi-warhead intercontinental ballistic missile on Monday amid growing tensions with the United States over the crisis in Ukraine. The SS-27 Mod 2 road-mobile ICBM was launched around 2:40 a.m. EST from Russia’s Plesetsk launch facility, located about 500 miles north of Moscow. “The main purpose of the launch is to validate the reliability of a batch of this class of missiles made at the Votkinsk Plant,” Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Yegorov told state-run Interfax-AVN. An unspecified number of simulated nuclear warheads landed at an impact range on the Kura test...

Exclusive: How North Korea Tipped Its Hand by Eli Lake Apr 15, 2013 4:45 AM EDT The U.S. recovered the front section of the rocket used in North Korea’s satellite launch in December, which gave away the status of the regime's nuclear arms program. When North Korean engineers launched a satellite into space on December 12, it seemed like business as usual, with the familiar cycle of condemnations from the west and statements of defiance from the Hermit Kingdom. But that launch also led many U.S. intelligence analysts to assess that Pyongyang possessed the ability to miniaturize the components necessary...

^^ The link

I was reading about the Cox Report. Interesting stuff. •China stole design information regarding 7 thermonuclear weapons in the US arsenal. W56 for Minuteman II ICBM, W62 for Minuteman III ICBM, W70 for Lance SRBM, W76 for Trident C4 SLBM, W78 for Minuteman III ICBM, W87 for Peacekeeper ICBM and W88 for Trident D5 SLBM. •These stolen secrets enabled the PLA to accelerate the design, development and testing of its own nuclear weapons. •China's next generation of nuclear weapons would contain elements of stolen U.S. design information and would be comparable in effectiveness to the weapons used by the United...

General Boykin was more pessimistic. "I have a different view, Glenn, I believe that Iran has a nuclear warhead now. Now, that's gonna shock a lot of people, but they've been working for 25 years and they've had the assistance of North Korea as well as the Russians. You don't work for 25 years without succeeding in the development of a warhead."

North Korea Close to Producing Uranium-Based Warhead, Source Says Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2011 North Korea is almost three-fourths of the way toward a capability to manufacture uranium-based nuclear warheads, an anonymous high-ranking South Korean official told the Yonhap News Agency on Monday (see GSN, Nov. 7). The official asserted that North Korea's uranium enrichment program at Yongbyon was now a "small industry," capable of generating nuclear weapons. North Korea one year ago first revealed its uranium work to the world. The only known uranium enrichment plant that U.S. specialists were allowed to tour was estimated to contain some 2,000 centrifuges....

Six months after the first test flight of the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle’s (HTV-2) which failed to meet its objective, an independent Engineering Review Board (ERB) identified the anomaly that caused the vehicle to exceeding the design flight control envelope. “No major changes to the vehicle or software are required to mitigate the first flight anomaly” said David Neyland, DARPA Tactical Technology Office director, “Engineers will adjust the vehicle’s center of gravity, decrease the angle of attack flown and use the onboard reaction control system to augment the vehicle flaps when HTV-2 flies next summer” Neyland added. DARPA is planning...

The Israeli Air Force has increased its training of air base personnel to keep bases operating after attacks by ballistic missiles. These warheads will either be filled with high explosives, cluster bombs or chemical weapons. Israelis know what kind of damage this stuff can do, and set up training programs that assume hits in different areas during each training exercise. The air base personnel then go through the procedures they have practiced to deal with each type of hit. Last year, twelve of these drills were held. So far this year, 25 have been conducted. The training exercises also often...

Minute Man II missile with a "replica" nuclear warhead was successfully launched from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, officials said. The National Nuclear Security Administration conducted the test in cooperation with the U.S. Air Force, an NNSA release said Thursday. The test was to evaluate the overall performance of the U.S. intercontinental ballistic weapon system, NNSA said. "This successful JTA (warhead) test illustrates NNSA's commitment to ensuring that all weapon systems perform as designed," said Brig. Gen. Garrett Harencak, NNSA Principal Assistant Deputy Administrator for Military Application. "The continued strong cooperation between the NNSA and (the Department of Defense) is...

ORLANDO, Fla., April 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Lockheed Martin's (NYSE:LMT - News) multi-purpose AGM114R HELLFIRE II missile scored another success in its second proof-of-principle (POP) flight test, the first armed with a live warhead. The Rmodel, or "Romeo" missile, features a multi-purpose warhead that enables a single HELLFIRE missile to cover all of the target sets of the currently fielded laser-guided variants. ...The missile was launched with a low trajectory suitable for a military operation in urban terrain scenario and struck the target board precisely designated by the laser aimpoint. The precursor warhead detonated on impact, while the primary warhead successfully...

Aerojet announced that the company has been selected to provide the MK 125 warhead for Raytheon Missile Systems' family of Standard Missile programs, with deliveries beginning in 2010. The MK 125 warhead is the lethality mechanism for the SM-2 and SM-6 missile systems. This important missile system provides the U.S. Navy's fleet long-range protection from aerial threats and ensures the ability of the fleet to safely accomplish its primary mission of force projections wherever and whenever the nation calls. The program management and manufacturing will take place at Aerojet's modern, low-cost, load assembly and pack facility in Camden, Ark. Vice...

North Korea will eventually be able to make a nuclear warhead small enough to fit in a missile, a news report said Sunday. Seoul's Yonhap news agency, citing the state-run Korea Institute for Defence Analyses (KIDA), said Pyongyang developing the technology to achieve miniaturisation was inevitable. "It is believed that North Korea has not completed the technology for the miniaturisation... of nuclear warheads," KIDA said in a report to be issued in January, according to Yonhap. But KIDA said it is "just a matter of time", noting the country has a high-explosives test site and an estimated 3,000 nuclear scientists...

Mideast: Iran tests an advanced warhead design as it gets caught shipping weapons to Hezbollah. Syria is reported to give the group operational control over Scud missiles. It's five minutes to midnight. Tyranny abhors a vacuum. While the U.S. and the West dither in Hamlet-like fashion over whatever we shall do in places such as Afghanistan and Iran, the Axis of Evil is in full swing in its plans to destroy Israel and threaten Europe and America. Israel last week seized what it said was the largest arms cache ever intercepted in the region. Israeli navy commandos boarded the Francop,...

The Pentagon has missed the deadline set by the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review for the retirement of the W62 nuclear warhead. Retirement of the warhead, which arms a portion of the 450 U.S. Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, was scheduled for completion in Fiscal Year 2009, which ended on September 30th. But the Department of Defense has been unable to confirm the warhead has been retired, saying instead earlier today: “The retirement of the W62 is progressing toward completion.” The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review decided that, “the W62 will be retired by the end of Fiscal Year 2009.” The schedule...

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in October 1957, the United States feared that nuclear missiles would soon follow. How could we stop them? In the Dr. Strangelove era, no idea was too absurd, and Nicholas Christofilos, an elevator engineer turned nuclear physicist, had a doozy. Christofilos had only undergraduate degrees in electrical and mechanical engineering, but he had become a top military scientist at California's Livermore Laboratory with a reputation for audacious creativity. He suggested that an atomic explosion in space could generate a vast flux of electrons, which would form a shell of energy over Earth, a phenomenon...