ONLINE EXCLUSIVE

By
Global Security Newswire

© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, March 13, 2008

“The last thing the Middle East needs now is another war,” a senior Defense Department official recently said when asked about the prospect that President Bush might order airstrikes on Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons facilities.

Were those the famous last words of Adm. William J. “Fox” Fallon — the nation’s top commander, who resigned under pressure this week after the publication of an Esquire profile describing him as “brazenly challenging his commander in chief” by resisting war against Tehran?

Not exactly.

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By Elaine M. Grossman
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON - A top U.S. general is pressing Congress to accelerate plans for a study he said is crucial to the effort to field a new nuclear warhead (see GSN, Feb. 5).

Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, head of U.S. Strategic Command, told Global Security Newswire that without results from an as-yet incomplete design study of the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), he would be ill-prepared to advise the incoming president next year on how best to modernize the atomic arsenal.

The assessment is widely seen as a key step toward ultimately building the controversial warhead because it would flesh out details of what it would take to produce the new design.

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By Elaine M. Grossman
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON - A top-ranking officer at the U.S. Defense Department said last week he believes that virtually no U.S. president would use a nuclear weapon in conflict, even if it were a bomb variant with very limited destructive power (see GSN, April 4, 2006).

In his first wide-ranging interview since becoming vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright also told Global Security Newswire he thinks a new generation of conventionally armed, long-range weapons could substitute for nuclear arms in a sizable portion of the U.S. military’s global targeting plan.

As the first Marine to lead U.S. Strategic Command - a three-year assignment he concluded in early August - Cartwright initiated several sweeping changes, among them the assumption of expanded responsibilities and the delegation of some of his own command authority to an array of subordinate organizations (see GSN, Dec. 2, 2005).

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By Elaine M. Grossman, Global Security Newswire
© National Journal Group Inc.

In his testimony before House and Senate panels this week, Army Gen. David Petraeus urged a deliberative approach to shifting security responsibilities to the nascent Iraqi army, but it is not clear he will have the last word on timing.

Some top military and civilian officials are privately advocating that the Iraqis be given greater control over the primary U.S. mission in Iraq — securing the population from insurgent and sectarian attacks — on a faster timetable than Petraeus appears ready to embrace.

This twist in the debate comes as the top commander for the Middle East, Adm. William Fallon, and some members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have pushed for the Iraqis to step up their own political and military efforts to reduce violence and achieve reconciliation, according to informed sources.

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Elaine M. Grossman
© National Journal Group, Inc.

The United States holds nearly 20,000 suspected insurgents in detention at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq and, on long days in the desert sun, the inmates can get restless. On May 14, restlessness turned into a riot.

Detainees corralled inside huge compounds — where the only refuge from the sun is a rudimentary tent — decided it was time to move. Virtually every captive in a 1,000-man compound pushed up against the fence and chanted in Arabic.

The number of agitators actually was several thousand, “if you count somebody cheering them on,” says Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone, who oversees the detention camps in Iraq. “I guess if they wanted to, they could have” pushed the fence down, he says. The inmates, though, still would have had to run a long way to reach Camp Bucca’s heavily guarded outer perimeter.

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By Elaine M. Grossman
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Navy has toyed for years with the idea of improving the accuracy of its Trident D-5 nuclear payload, with an eye toward giving the weapon greater utility against a wider range of targets, according to defense officials and outside experts (see GSN, Aug. 1).

However, Congress has repeatedly thwarted efforts to launch an ambitious precision upgrade program for the submarine-launched missile’s Mk-4 re-entry body.

Lawmakers have cited concerns that a more accurate warhead could increase the risk of nuclear exchanges. A U.S. president, the theory goes, might be more tempted to order a nuclear strike if he had greater confidence that the weapon would very precisely destroy hardened ICBM silos or underground bunkers. Additionally, an adversary might pre-emptively launch nuclear weapons if its weapons or national leaders were thought to be at imminent risk of pinpoint attacks, critics on Capitol Hill have said.

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By Elaine M. Grossman
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON - Adm. William Fallon, head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, said late last month he is confident Pakistan would avoid ratcheting up tensions in its nuclear weapons standoff with India, despite some troubling signs (see GSN, June 25).

The top commander’s remarks, offered in an exclusive July 27 interview with Global Security Newswire, come as the government of Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf appears to be moving to dramatically increase the nation’s nuclear weapons production capacity.

At the same time, Pakistan is renewing its condemnation of a pact the Bush administration has struck that promises U.S. aid for India’s nuclear energy program. The agreement, which has not yet been approved by either nation’s legislature, would grant New Delhi access to sensitive U.S. nuclear technologies in exchange for submitting its civilian nuclear reactors to international oversight (see GSN, Aug.3).

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