Agency Officials Praise New START Treaty Progress

By Cheryl Pellerin

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON  – Work taking place under the 16-month-old new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the United States and Russia fosters transparency and predictability for the world's two largest deployed nuclear arsenals, federal officials told a Senate panel today.

Among those testifying before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations were Rose Gottemoeller, acting undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, and Madelyn R. Creedon, assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs.

“Our experience so far demonstrates that the New START's verification regime works and will help push open the door to new and more complicated verification techniques in the future,” said Gottemoeller, who led the U.S. treaty negotiating team as assistant secretary of state for verification and compliance.

The Senate approved the treaty in 2010, and the related legislative process produced a federal commitment to spend $185 billion over 10 years to modernize nuclear warheads and delivery systems.

“When the treaty is fully implemented, it will result in the lowest number of deployed nuclear warheads since the 1950s, the first full decade of the nuclear age,” Gottemoeller said, “and 1,550 warheads deployed on or counted on 700 delivery vehicles -- that is, intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine launch ballistic missiles and bombers.”

When the first START treaty was signed in 1991, she added, the United States and the Soviet Union each had deployed about 10,550 nuclear warheads.

During the first year of the new treaty, the United States and Russia kept pace with each other in conducting inspections, she said, both completing the yearly maximum of 18 inspections. Today, each side can make 25 short-notice inspections a year, and inspections have taken place involving intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, heavy bombers at their operating bases, storage facilities, conversion or elimination facilities, and test ranges.

“Through inspection activities, we have acquired new and valuable information,” Gottemoeller told the panel. “For example, New START includes intrusive reentry vehicle inspections that are designed to confirm the exact number of re-entry vehicles, or warheads, on individual missiles selected for inspection. We are now able to confirm the exact number of warheads on any randomly selected Russian ICBM and SLBM -- something we were not able to do under the 1991 START treaty.”

The exhibition process, another aspect of treaty implementation, gives both parties a chance to see new kinds of strategic offensive arms, view distinguishing features and confirm declared data.

“The United States and Russian Federation have also been sharing a veritable mountain of data with each other,” the undersecretary said.

“Since entry into force we have exchanged over 2,500 notifications through our Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers,” she added. “They help track movement and changes in the status of systems on a day-in, day-out basis.

“That,” Gottemoeller continued, “combined with the databases that we exchange every six months, gives us an opportunity to have a kind of living database -- a truly real-time look at what is going on inside the Russian strategic forces.”

Testifying on the implications for U.S. nuclear forces and policy of the new START treaty, Creedon said implementation is proceeding successfully and the Defense Department is fully engaged in meeting its treaty obligations.

DOD has hosted multiple inspection activities at U.S. strategic facilities and has participated in reciprocal activities at Russian strategic facilities, the assistant secretary added.

“The United States is on track to complete the reductions necessary to comply with the New START treaty's central limits by February 2018,” Creedon said, adding that DOD plans to retain 240 deployed Trident SLBMs on Ohio-class submarines, up to 60 deployed heavy bombers and up to 420 single-warhead Minuteman III ICBMs.

“To meet the treaty's central limits,” she said, “the Obama administration plans to convert or eliminate a yet-to-be-determined combination of ICBM launchers and SLBM launchers [and] our nuclear-capability heavy bombers.”

The service life of the department’s Trident II D5 SLBMs is being extended to 2042, and construction of the first Ohio-class replacement submarine is scheduled to begin in 2021, she added.

The administration plans to sustain Minuteman III ICBMs through 2030, and the United States will maintain two nuclear-capable B-52H strategic bomber wings and one B-2A wing.

The department also is working to complete a comprehensive drawdown plan, a substantial portion of which will be completed to support the fiscal 2014 budget request, Creedon added.

“As the president's budget request for fiscal year 2013 makes clear, DOD is committed to modernizing the delivery systems covered by the New START treaty that underpin nuclear deterrents,” the assistant secretary said.

Maintaining strategic stability, assuring allies and sustaining a safe, secure and effective deterrent requires a partnership between the executive branch and Congress, she added.

Reduction Focus Shifts From Nukes to Bio Threats

By Cheryl Pellerin

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON  – The 21-year-old program to reduce weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union is shifting focus from nuclear to biological threats and from Russia to Southeast Asia and Africa, the assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs told a Senate panel yesterday.

Madelyn R. Creedon said the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, established in 1991, is gradually shifting to more of a biological threat reduction effort as the program adapts to take on emerging weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, threats in other regions.

“With all the work that's gone on in Russia over the better part of the last 20 years,” she added, “a tremendous amount has been accomplished” in reducing the threat from legacy WMD programs of the former Soviet Union.

Creedon testified before the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on emerging threats and capabilities, which met to review President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2013 $3 billion budget request for programs at the departments of Defense and Energy that seek to stem the flow of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

“We do continue to do a variety of work with Russia and in time that will phase down a bit,” Creedon said. “But we also value the relationship with Russia and in that context are seeking an extension of the umbrella agreement that allows for the work in Russia.”

An extension of the agreement, which expires in 2013, would allow work to continue “in some of the areas of sustainment, chemical weapons and some small amount of additional destruction work,” she added.

“We also continue to work in the states of the former Soviet Union,” said Creedon, adding that large biological security programs are ongoing in Kazakhstan, with similar programs in Ukraine.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union military industrial complex transformed viruses and bacteria to weapons of war, and industrial-scale biological weapons facilities were built to win the germ war arms race, according to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency website.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, newly independent republics faced the challenge of dealing with deadly pathogens at sites left unprotected and vulnerable to theft.

Now, Creedon said, “we are beginning to shift focus in the biological program to Africa and the Middle East, so in time we will transition over to those areas of the world as well.”

During 2011, Creedon testified, the CTR program built new nonproliferation partnerships in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Each country’s agreement will be based on its needs and requirements.

For countries like Kazakhstan that are more advanced in such biological work, Creedon added, “you look at things like, how many collections of dangerous pathogens do they have? How are they secured? Should they be consolidated? Should you combine veterinary pathogens and human health pathogens, or does it make more sense to keep them apart?”

In accordance with the CTR’s historical focus, DOD tries to consolidate such biological sites according to a country’s requirements, and monitors each site’s security.

In countries with more advanced facilities, Creedon said, including Kazakhstan and Ukraine, DOD checks the biological safety level of the facilities and determines whether they meet international health regulations and standards.

“We also look at the overall disease surveillance capabilities of the country, because … it's a national security requirement to make sure that our troops in the area, our families in the area, are protected,” she added.

“We want to make sure, particularly in countries that have a naturally occurring incidence of diseases that could be weaponized, that we know whether or not an outbreak is manmade or … natural, Creedon said.

As the biological program expands, Creedon said, “these are the things that we're going to look at with respect to each country, each agreement.”

In the United States, such programs are vetted across federal agencies through a process led by the White House staff, she added. International agencies as well as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services are included.

Testifying at the same hearing was Kenneth Myers III, director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the U.S. Strategic Command Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction.

He told lawmakers CTR and other nonproliferation programs “are based upon a cooperative relationship with a country, based upon a nonviolent environment where those programs can be carried out.” Myers is also associated with the Joint Forces Headquarters for Elimination, established this year by Stratcom.

“The standing Joint Force Headquarters is designed to be able to provide the same type of capability in a nonpermissive environment,” he said, “or one in which we are not permitted a cooperative opportunity to reduce weapons of mass destruction.”

Experts to Make Missile Defense Case at Moscow Meeting

By Cheryl Pellerin

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON – At Russia’s international missile defense conference held in Moscow tomorrow and May 4, U.S. experts will make their case for the European missile defense plan “in a broader forum,” one of the delegation leaders said today.

Ellen Tauscher, special envoy for strategic stability and missile defense at the State Department, said the United States welcomes the opportunity to participate in the missile defense conference, organized by the Russian defense ministry.

Madelyn R. Creedon, assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs, also heads the delegation. The delegation heads spoke to reporters during a telephone briefing from Moscow.

“We view this as an opportunity to exchange various viewpoints on missile defense,” Creedon said, “and also as an opportunity to hear various views of our colleagues from the approximately 50 countries that we understand have sent representatives to this meeting.”

The ministry also invited NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen to the meeting, which is being held, according to Russian news reports, to analyze global missile threats and assess technical characteristics of future missile systems that may threaten Europe.

During NATO’s 2010 summit in Lisbon, Portugal, Russia and NATO agreed to cooperate on the European missile defense network, but negotiations have since ground to a halt.

The U.S. phased adaptive approach to European missile defense is a long-term source of tension between the United States and Russia, whose concerns are political and technical, Tauscher said.

“Our view and analysis is that the United States missile defense doesn’t undermine Russia’s strategic deterrent,” she said. “We have explained our position in numerous official and public channels and we will once again present the technical facts at this conference.”

It is in both nations’ mutual interest, she added, to engage in cooperation and avoid confrontation.

“While the United States and Russia are cooperating on a wide range of issues, from Afghanistan to counterterrorism to trade, cooperation on missile defense could be a game changer in U.S.-Russia and NATO-Russia relations,” Tauscher said.

“Cooperation has the potential to enhance the national security of both the United States and Russia, … [and] presents an opportunity to put aside the vestiges of Cold War thinking and move away from mutually assured destruction toward mutually assured stability,” she said.

Creedon said the exchange this week will allow the United States to publicly provide reasons why the U.S. missile defense plan is designed to protect the homeland and Europe and is not aimed at Russia. The plan calls for a steady buildup of sea- and land-based systems designed to protect European nations and U.S. troops in Europe from a growing threat of missile attack from North Korea and the Middle East, particularly Iran.

“We’ve listened to Russia’s concerns,” Creedon said. “We continue to seek solutions that will address them but we continue to believe that the best way is through cooperation and not confrontation. We hope very much that this meeting tomorrow and on Friday will revitalize the spirit of cooperation and we hope that in the near future we will actually be able to enter into constructive mutually beneficial cooperation on missile defense.”

Tauscher said the United States is committed to all four phases of the phased adaptive approach, and that the negotiators have been transparent with Russia about the timing, deployment and scope of the U.S. missile defense deployment.

“While we can work cooperatively together, we cannot agree to preconditions outlined by the Russian government,” she said. “We cannot agree to any limitations on our missile defense deployment. We are able to agree, however, to a political statement that our missile defenses are not directed at Russia.”

She added that such a statement would publicly proclaim the U.S. intent to cooperate and chart the direction for cooperation, not limitation.

“I hope my Russian colleagues recognize that we have no capability or intent to undermine strategic stability, and our objective is not about winning public relations points,” Tauscher said, “and that cooperation is a much better approach than sticking to the previous pattern of competition.”

Situation Report From WI EOC - Point Beach Incident

The State of Wisconsin Emergency Operations Center was activated this evening following an incident at the Point Beach Nuclear Power Plant. At 9:06 p.m., the plant issued an Alert status after high levels of carbon monoxide were reported in a mechanical room at the plant.  

There was no threat to the public or plant personnel. No radioactive releases have occurred. An alert is the second lowest level of a four-level federal classification system for nuclear generating plant emergencies.

The Alert status was cancelled by the plant and verified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission shortly after 11:00 p.m. after carbon monoxide levels dropped.

The Point Beach plant is located along Lake Michigan in Manitowoc County. It is owned and operated by NextEra Energy Resources.