My Blog Posts

• Best Blog Comment Ever
  09/24/2010 12:25:29 PM EST
  Haha, amazing.
• Sharing New START's Negotiating Record Is Unwarranted
  09/20/2010 10:37:19 AM EST
  Last week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved New START on a bipartisan basis. Pause. Enjoy small victory. You good? Hope so, because it’s time to get back on the grind. This morning, KReif and I have a new article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. In it, we argue that sharing New START’s negotiating record – as treaty skeptics have called for (here, here, here) – is unwarranted. Doing so might delay the approval process and would confuse key issues, misinterpret ratification precedents from previous arms control treaties, and undermine future US diplomacy based on flimsy evidence.
• New START, Meet The Big Mo
  09/16/2010 04:46:23 PM EST
  Today, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to approve the New START nuclear weapons reduction treaty.  Republicans Richard Lugar, Bob Corker, and Johnny Isakson joined the 11 Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to vote in support. In a political climate paralyzed by partisanship on other issues, this bipartisan vote of approval demonstrated an important commitment to reducing the dangers posed by nuclear weapons. Indeed, New START encourages stability between the United States and Russia, two nations with nuclear stockpiles that could still destroy the world several times over.  That is why the treaty earned "the unanimous support of America's military leadership," according to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Seven former leaders of Strategic Command, which oversees U.S. nuclear weapons, endorsed the agreement. So did James Schlesinger, President Nixon’s former secretary of defense who recently led the conservative wing of the influential Strategic Posture Commission and who the Wall Street Journal dubbed Republicans’ nuclear “Yoda.” Because of delays approving New START, the United States has not conducted an on-site inspection of Russia’s nuclear arsenal in over 285 days and counting. This lack of information threatens U.S. national security by undermining transparency and verifiability, the hallmarks of stable nuclear deterrence in the post-Cold War world. New START now moves into procedural purgatory – the Senate calendar – where it will await Senate floor action and a final vote. Senators should debate, and approve, New START as soon as possible in order to mitigate the unnecessary danger posed by the current lack of verifiable information and restrictions on Russia’s still lethal nuclear arsenal.
• Budgeting Is So Much Fun Because...
  09/16/2010 12:16:05 PM EST
  Nice one (h/t Gordon Lubold at Morning Defense): When DoD is faced with a 20-year threat,
  the government responds with a 15-year plan,
  in a six-year defense program,
  managed by three-year personnel,
  attempting to develop a two-year budget,
  which in reality is funded by a one-year appropriation,
  which is typically four-to-six months late,
  actually formulated over a three-day weekend,
  and approved in a one-hour decision briefing!!!
• MDA Comes Clean on Laser
  09/13/2010 10:48:05 AM EST
  Following up on my post from last week, MDA put out a press statement Friday about the Airborne Laser Test Bed's (ALTB) failed September 1 test. According to the statement,

  the experiment terminated early when corrupted beam control software steered the high energy laser slightly off center. While we continue analyzing the failure, preliminary indications are that a communication software error within the system that controls the laser beam caused misalignment of the beam. The ALTB safety system detected this shift and immediately shut down the high energy laser.

  Good choice by MDA to disclose this information, although it should be done earlier next time.