Paul's Down-Home Page

Arlene is sick. Thomas is sick. Matthew is sick. I don’t feel well, although it’s sort of a proto-sick state rather than full-blown winter ick. Thus, instead of teaching 300 people about Windows security in Redmond (like I was supposed to be today through Saturday), I’m hiding in my basement, popping Sudafed like Rush Limbaugh and trying valiantly to cut through the cloud of fuzz that seems to have enveloped me.

According to the US Census Bureau, more Americans are injured by beds each year (466,464) than by skateboards, all-terrain vehicles, swimming pools, televisions, and power saws combined (a total of 389,128). Sleep well!

Over at Instapundit, Glenn points to this story and wonders if it’s true. I couldn’t find anything recent, but a little Googling turned up some interesting tidbits.
My layman’s understanding of the Non-Proliferation Treaty is that command-and-control assistance (e.g. systems for surveilling, communicating with, or controlling nuclear forces or weapons) would be prohibited, but surety assistance (e.g. making sure that weapons can’t be detonated accidentally or without proper authorization) wouldn’t necessarily be banned. In fact, it would seem like a good thing to give surety assistance to countries, like Pakistan, where the political conditions may make it more likely that someone will attempt to detonate a weapon without authorization. It’s not clear if the Pakistanis want help with C-and-C or surety, and what (if any) help the US is offering.
So, on with the links. First, this NBC story from 2/8 is cited in the Telegraph story. NBC quotes unnamed sources as saying that the Pakistani warheads are more secure than India’s and that India has almost a 2-1 warhead advantage (interesting, if true, since conventional wisdom says the opposite). However, the story goes on to claim that Pakistani weapons are insecure because of political instability (probably true) and that the US has “contingency teams” ready to secure the weapons; neither claim is attributed.
Another related report I can find (citing Sy Hersh in the New York Times) is dated 12/7/01 in the Asia Times. Hersh’s original story claimed that an elite US military unit was training to sneak into Pakistan and steal or disable their weapons, if necessary, to prevent them from being used. (Of course, this report also says “Pakistan has kept its promise to the international community not to export, share, transfer or assist any country in nuclear technology”, so take it with a grain of salt.) More interestingly, the article claims that the US turned down Pakistan’s 2001 request for command-and-control upgrades, but it doesn’t cite a source.
Sean Gregory has a February 2001 report here that points out the challenge of building reliable command-and-control in countries where communications and power infrastructures are unreliable.
The Center for Nonproliferation Studies has a report that assesses Pakistani surety as good, outlining some specific scenarios and explaining what measures Pakistan has taken (or is assumed to have taken) to prevent them. The biggest measure they appear to have taken is to separate the fissile warhead cores from the warheads and delivery systems. This would be like taking the buckshot out of your shotgun shells and storing shells, shot, and shotgun in three separate locations; it makes it much more difficult for unauthorized parties to assemble the weapon components, since they have to compromise more than one site; however, it also increases the amount of time required to generate a complete weapon for strategic response.
There’s an interesting undated paper here that ends by saying “the safety and security measures are likely to remain primitive by Western standards”. Yikes. The safety measures built into the weapons themselves can be quite complex; this draft USAF document outlines some of the standards that apply. Steve Bellovin has a fascinating document here that describes some of these safety measures in more detail.