Episodes
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Russia launched an experimental, offensive missile into Ukraine, aimed at the PA Pivdenmash (former Yuzhmash) factory. This is a new world of missile combat, as this looks to be the first use of an IRBM (though not at IRBM ranges) and possibly MIRV (though conventional!) in combat.
Jeffrey and Aaron talk about Russia's new Oreshnik missile, what it is, its relationship to the RS-26 Rubezh IRBM/ICBM/treaty-skirting missile, the Typhon-Oreshnik European strike dyad, and the looming new Euromissile crisis.
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The legendary Fred Kaplan joins Jeffrey to talk about his brand new novel, A Capital Calamity.
Fred and Jeffrey talk through the Fred's experiences in nuclear strategy and the influences on his new novel, A Capital Calamity, from JFK's EXCOMM tapes, the MX basing debate, and the Jane Austen meets Dr. Strangelove comedy of DC manners and etiquette.
Catch one of Fred's upcoming book readings for A Capital Calamity in DC and NYC, at the Union Market Politics & Prose on Saturday, October 26th and at Community Bookstore, Park Slope, Brooklyn, on Tuesday, October 29th.
Fred Kaplan is a national security columnist for Slate. Former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for Boston Globe. Author of 7 books, including The Bomb, The Wizards of Armageddon, The Insurgents (Pulitzer Prize finalist), and now, his first novel, A Capital Calamity.
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Episodes manquant?
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An absolutely massive mobile ballistic missile was paraded in North....
...wait sorry....
South Korea. Force of habit.
Decker joins Jeffrey to talk about the absolute unit that the ROK just showed off. But don't worry, it's just an "SRBM with an eight ton warhead," nothing to see here. The team talks about messaging, move/countermoves on the Korean Peninsula, and who actually started this dang missile race to begin with.
Audio Originally Recorded October 2nd.
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China tested an ICBM deep into the Pacific Ocean, instead of short-shooting it into PRC deserts.
Decker Eveleth joins Jeffrey to talk about why this is a fascinating change in behavior for the PLA Rocket Force and PRC in general. China has only ever done this twice before, both over 40 years ago, back in 1980. Decker and Jeffrey talk about the internally signalling mechanisms, the issues with corruption in the PLARF, China's potential move to US and Russian style ICBM test notifications, strategic stability, and our favorite: absolutely gorgeous high-resolution photos of solid-fuel ICBMs.
Audio Originally Recorded September 27th
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Iran just launched what may be the largest single missile raid in history, and Israel claims no Israeli deaths.
While we're still very early in the news cycle, Jeffrey and Aaron start picking apart the information available to look at what we can learn about the state of the Iranian offensive missile arsenal, weight what Iran's options for next steps are, and dive into the internal nuclear politics of both Israel and Iran.
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Friend of the Pod Decker Eveleth found the Burevestnik deployment site, it seems!
Decker, of the CNA Corporation, has tracked down what appears to be the deployment site of the 9M730 Burevestnik, aka the SSC-X-9 Skyfall, using Planet Labs satellite imagery. It appears to be about 300 miles north of Mosco, near a national-level nuclear storage facility.
Decker and Jeffrey talk through Decker's methodology for identifying the storage facility, why Russia may deploy such a dangerous system so close to major cities, and the bureaucratic politics that could be driving the development of this bizarre weapon.
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Jeffrey and his team have been OSINT'ing the heck out of the deployment of the Typhon Strategic Mid-Range Fires (SMRF) ((Typhon Smurf?)) to the Philippines, and tracked down the airport and deployment zone.
Recently the U.S. Army deployed the new Typhon SMRF system to the Philippines as part of an exercise, raising the ire of both the Russian and Chinese governments. The Army seemed to try and keep it relatively low profile initially but the Philippines just....tweeted it out basically.
As the Pacific continues to bristle with missiles, Jeffrey and Aaron talk about regional escalation dynamics, who is buying what missiles, and who they are (or aren't?) actually pointed at...
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Tom Schelling described escalation as a "curved slope" where you won't be able to predict when the final drop occurs, and Ukraine targeting an early warning radar in Russia certainly is at least a few steps down that slop.
Jeffrey and Aaron sit down at the intersection of "legitimate conventional military target" and "direct cause of nuclear escalation" to talk about the risks and justifications for bringing EW systems into a conflict, and discuss James Acton's idea of modern entanglement, and the connection between modern conventional and nuclear operations.
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We have data! Jeffrey and Aaron walk through the new primary source data to figure out if either Iran's missile raid or Israeli's missile defense efforts were effective. This appears to be the first time that successful wartime ballistic missile defense intercepts can be validated via open source means, which is a major step forward for open source missile and BMD analysis.
Jeffrey and Aaron also talk about the relative impact of conventional ballistic missiles, and what secondary effects must be considered when assessing the value of interceptors vs. offensive missiles.
This one gets wonky.
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And you may find yourself not complying with the IAEA
And you may find yourself in a war in another part of the world
And you may find yourself making a metaphor about an automobile
And you may find yourself enriching your uranium stocks, and building reactors
And you may ask yourself "Well, how did I get here?"
Letting the days go by, politics will hold you down
Letting the days go by, heavy water underground
Into Fordow again, maybe to Isfahan
Once in a lifetime, realignment all around
Same as it ever was, Same as it ever was
Jeffrey and Aaron go through the current state of play in Iranian politics (just prior to its massive missile strike on Israel), particularly around the nuclear program and what the bomb genuinely means for security and Iranian internal politics, and review how we got here over the past 20 years of Arms Control Wonkery.
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William Alberque joins Jeffrey for a friendly and deep debate about the Russian Navy nuclear documents leaked to FT, covered in our previous episode.
This is a fascinating discussion not only on the documents themselves, but what they imply for Russia's view of its own territorial integrity, what it needs to convince its soldiers to go to bat for, and the eternal issues of "self-deterrence".
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Max Seddon and Chris Cook with the Financial Times have written an excellent piece on leaked Russian Naval documents that FT saw, focused on thresholds for Russian nuclear use, especially in a war scenario with China.
Jeffrey and Aaron go through what the documents reveal and debate if they're generally consistant with what is understood about Russian nuclear doctrine or, as FT states, indicate that the threshold is lower than previous understood.
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Road trip to Vegas.
As part of an NGO transparency visit, NNSA opened up the Nevada Test Site to a group of international nuclear weapons experts, including one Dr. Jeffrey Lewis.
Jeffrey goes through what he saw: P Tunnel, The BEEF, and the crown jewel, U1a. This was an NNSA exercise in transparency, aimed at showing the community and world that the U.S. stockpile stewardship and treaty verification exercises are separate from nuclear explosive tests. It was also, and we cannot underline this enough, extremely cool.
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Shoigu went shopping.
Russia is buying KN-23 and KN-25 missiles from North Korea and launching them in support of its invasion of Ukraine. Imagery from on the ground clearly shows North Korean style solid-propellant missiles.
Jeffrey and Aaron talk about what this means for global ballistic missile proliferation, possible South Korean responses, and the continued rise of North Korea as a ballistic missile exporter.
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North Korea finally got a reconnaissance satellite into orbit, after several failed prior attempts! While it is a little rough around the edges, every program has to start somewhere.
Jeffrey and Aaron talk through the implications of the DPRK's reconnaissance satellite, the relationship of the DPRK missile and space programs, and the importance of high fashion for the spacelaunching elites.
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Take a listen to the latest season of Jeffrey Lewis's podcast, The Reason We're All Still Here
Far too often, governments behave like toddlers. They’re fickle. They don’t like to share. And good luck getting them to pay attention to any problem that isn’t directly in front of them. They like to push each other to the brink, and often do. But when they don’t, it’s usually because other people enter the proverbial room. Private citizens who step up and play peacemaker when their governments won’t or can’t. People who strive for collaboration and understanding, and sometimes end up finding it in unlikely places. Those people and the work they do, they’re the reason we’re all still here.
This season, we’ll hear from scientists, analysts, and idealists who have gone to crazy lengths just for a shot at making peace and building understanding From smoke-filled rooms in North Korea to secret labs in the Soviet Union… to the lawless seas, and even to the depths of outer space (or, at least, the conference rooms where they talk about the depths of outer space). This podcast tells the stories about the people holding us back from the brink.
Hosted by Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, a professor and scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies on the Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies faculty. Previously, he served as Director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation and Executive Director of the Managing the Atom Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. He is the founder of ArmsControlWonk.com, a leading resource on disarmament, arms control and nonproliferation issues.
Produced by Gilded Audio and the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
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Looks like everyone is preparing for a party.
Between Russia's potential un-signing of a nuclear test treaty, threats to test "if the United States does," and refurbishments at Novaya Zemlya, things aren't looking great for the longevity of nuclear test ban norms. China and the U.S. have been modernizing too, though the U.S. has offered to allow monitors on-site to verify U.S. lack of testing.
Jeffrey and Aaron sit down to talk about the recent developments in Russia, and the likelyhood that there will be a return to explosive nuclear testing in the future.
The Era Without Arms Control continues, and threatens to deepen.
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Sam Lair joins the podcast to talk about Kim Jong Un's recent whirlwind tour of the North Korean Defense Industrial Base with Jeffrey and Scott.
If you're into missiles, geolocation, and machine tools (and, if you listen to this podcast, you probably are), you're going to want to tune in.
Sam and Jeffrey have been mapping out the DPRK DIB, including plant managers, machine tool lineages, production lines, and evolutions over time. Kim's visit to these plants, and the accompanying KCNA imagery storm, unlocked a trove of new information about where nuclear delivery systems are produced and maintained, and updated our ideas for how big the arsenal may be.
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Jeffrey is joined by the illustrious Kelsey Atherton to discuss Christopher Nolan's film Oppenheimer, as well as the history and legacy of the titular man himself. Kelsey and Jeffrey dive into the choice to focus on Oppenheimer's own security legacy and bypass the direct and indirect horrors affected upon the Congolese miners, New Mexicans, and Japanese civilians, as well as the intentional rendering of power politics and personal animus within the U.S. security apparatus.
Kelsey penned a companion piece over at the Arms Control Wonk Blog, talking about the wider related experience of watching Barbie and Oppenheimer in the same day.
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Jeffrey is back from Hiroshima, where he participated in a Track 2 nuclear dialogue. The outlook for near-term arms control is still grim.
Jeffrey and Aaron unpack the G7 statements on disarmament that the Japanese representatives wanted to re-affirm, the tacit condemnation of Russian and Chinese contained within, and the global theater around narrative control of arms control.
Russian, US, and third party interpretations of CTBT and disarmament discussions create significant friction, but the discussion is well moderated by the traditional 5:00 happy hour.
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