Arms Control Wonk

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 da...

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 cor...

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 politic...

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 met...

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 kee...

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 f...

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...

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...

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".   Su...

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 t...

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 verificat...

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 ballisti...

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.    Sup...

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 ente...

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.   ...

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, productio...

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 rende...

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 t...

Germany has a gap that needs to be filled in the face of Russian threats. But this time it isn't Fulda, it is....the exoatmospheric layer of ballistic missile defenses? Jeffrey and Aaron try to understand Germany's decision to buy the very fancy Israeli/American Arrow-3 exoatmospheric BMD system, in absense of a specific Russian missile system and despite two Aegis Ashore sites coming online in Eu...

Jeffrey is back from Japan and North Korea's satellite-turned-submarine is back from the bottom of the ocean! North Korea's failed Chollima-1  space launcher and its payload, the Malligyong-1,  failed to reach space on May 30. Jeffrey and Aaron talk about the Japanese response to the launch, the North Korean reponse to the failure, and whether or not people are tacitly starting to accept North Kor...

Ankit Panda joins Jeffrey by the every so fancy pool at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, where they talk about competing speeches and messaging, the views on US-China competition from Southeast Asia, and about how Jeffrey didn't make any new friends in the PLA this year. Support us over at  Patreon.com/acwpodcast !

Ukraine is getting the SCALP-EG/Storm Shadow cruise missile, and that's raising a whole lot of questions about MTCR guidelines  Jeffrey and Aaron talk about the history of the Missile Technology Control Regime, what it was meant to originally address, and the whole host of problems associated with figuring out what a destabilizing cruise missile really looks like.  Support us over at  Patreon.com/...

President Yoon of South Korea recently visited the United States to talk nukes and Don McLean with President Biden. Jeffrey and Aaron talk through what the Declaration actually covers, how much was material and how much was fluff, and the moonwalking capabilities of the D5 SLBM.  Support us over at  Patreon.com/acwpodcast !

FINALLY.  After almost a decade of hinting and teasing and parading fake empty canisters, North Korea has debuted its long-awated solid propellant ICBM. And the team have some questions about where the construction and testing sites were...   Jeffrey, Scott, and Dave descend upon the CNS DC offices for a rare in-person podcast to commemorate the event we've been waiting on for years. Support us ov...

The IAEA is doing a great job with the s**t we're handing them. A very jetlagged Jeffrey joins Aaron to talk about the IAEA and the very positive role that Director General Rafael Grossi has played in trying to hold together the nuclear situation with Iran. JCPOA-holdover cameras, discontinuity in footage, and a bunch of suddenly friendliness from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia all make for a tense a...