Category: Bombs and rockets

Military matters and state security: the hard-edged kind of international relations

Dunkirk

I saw the 70mm film version of “Dunkirk” last night and found much to appreciate about it. The production values are excellent, and it generally seems an unusually realistic depiction of history and combat, with less of the spectacle and fewer of the implausible dramatic storylines that often dominate the genre. The non-linear storytelling adds to the sense of chaos, and perhaps adds a bit more dramatic tension to a story where — for anyone who has taken high school history — the broad outlines of the ending are known in advance.

The film is unusual in part because almost no characters have names which are mentioned or emphasized. Rather, most of the storytelling is visual and told in overlapping vignettes: sinking ships and air combat, and repeated portrayals of the men of the British Expeditionary Force waiting on the beach for its evacuation.

In some ways, I felt the film consciously subverted some of the tropes of spectacular high budget war films like the notorious “Pearl Harbor“, and even the more unified and neatly structured storytelling of classics like “Saving Private Ryan“. For instance, a successfully tense scene centres around whether an oil slick from a sinking ship would catch fire; in a “Pearl Harbor” type film, the leaking ship probably would have exploded in the shot when it was first shown. Only two moments struck me as transparently unrealistic: when the senior officer on the beach somehow knew exactly how many people had been rescued just as the last boats were leaving, and an odd scene in which men trapped in a sinking ship somehow believe that throwing a man or two overboard will address the problem of bullet holes below the waterline in the hull.

All told, the film was evocative and memorable, as well as generally non-moralizing (though the heroic Winston Churchill quotation in the closing minutes might have been usefully tempered with some reference to his disastrous involvement in the Gallipoli campaign of 1915-16). The absence of well-known actors (though I certainly recognized Mark Rylance from the excellent “Bridge of Spies“) added to the sense of watching a plausible historical reenactment more than a standard Hollywood drama.

Recommended for those with an interest in history, real-world sets in place of heavy CGI, and perhaps seeing very expensive ship sets being rotated and submerged. I’m curious about whether some genuine WWII aircraft were used in the air combat scenes that linked together the disparate bits of the plot.

Arming Saudi Arabia

I find the debate about Canadian arms companies selling weapons and vehicles to Saudi Arabia a little perplexing. The media coverage seems to turn on the question of whether the arms and equipment are being used to oppress the civilian population of Saudi Arabia. I find this perplexing because there seems to be ample evidence that oppression at home and abroad is the main business of the Saudi government, and that anybody selling them anything should expect it to be used that way.

On one hand, it’s appealing that moving to non-fossil fuel sources of energy could undermine countries like Saudi Arabia. On the other, it’s frightening to think what would happen to the region in a future where nobody wants or is willing to use their oil.

Activism as being a catalyst

When we think about global trends, we tend to focus on their importance and how rapidly things are changing. China’s economic rise, along with massive economic development and urbanization around the world, all have unambiguous importance, though we will endlessly disagree about how they will interact and few of us will live long enough to feel confident we saw the final outcome (there are major limits to knowledge and prediction).

If one makes a sincere effort to understand what is happening in the world and feels compelled to try to encourage some of the best possible outcomes, given the state of the world right now, perhaps it makes sense to think in terms of which trends you hope to speed up and which you hope to inhibit.

The key question in effectiveness has to be: am I / are we making a difference in terms of an important objective.

So perhaps it makes sense to think about being a catalyst or accelerant (to choose a more obviously violent analogy) hoping to create as substantial a ∆ifference as possible in the final chemical equilibrium.

Palantir and data analysis

Writing in The Guardian, Jacques Peretti has compiled an interesting summary of the technological capabilities and government-to-business relationships of Palantir, a secretive technology company focused on identifying patterns within large data sets and making them accessible to people without specialized training.

With sensors getting cheaper all the time, the tricky part of ubiquitous surveillance isn’t collecting the data. It’s making it intelligible and applicable. These kinds of powerful data linkage and analysis tools also undermine common-sense expectations and procedures for the protection of privacy. No human being might be able to look at a set of large supposedly-anonymized databases and pick out individuals, but it’s increasingly within the scope of what can be routinely done with computers.

Security of Pakistani nuclear weapons

Nevertheless, the exact nature of launch authorization procedures is ambiguous. Several sources refer to a system of two separate codes—one civilian and the other military—amounting to a “dual key” system. However, several authoritative accounts mention a three-man rule. In particular, the code to arm a weapon can only be inserted in the presence of three persons. It is possible that a two-man rule is adopted for movement of warheads and a three-man rule is adopted for employment authorization. According to Pakistani planners, the number of persons involved varies “for technical reasons”—three at some points in the chain of command, two at other points.

Pakistan is not explicit about its arrangements for weapons security, but it has developed physical safety mechanisms and firewalls both in the weapon systems themselves, as well as in the chain of command. No single individual can operate a weapon system, nor can one individual issue the command for nuclear weapons use. The NCA command and control system ensures that weapons can be operationally ready on short notice, yet unauthorized arming and/or use never takes place.

Pakistan does not keep its nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert. The nuclear weapons are few in number and probably kept in disassembled form; their components are reportedly stored separately, at dispersed sites. Keeping the weapons in a disassembled form, along with the use of authorization codes, reduces the risk of capture or unauthorized use. Naturally, there is considerable uncertainty about the location of Pakistani nuclear weapons and about procedures for actual use. After September 11, Pakistan ordered a redeployment of the country’s nuclear arsenal to at least six secret new locations, according to one account. Fissile materials are obviously stored in secret locations; probably in initial stages they are near installations such as Kahuta or Khushab, or close to Rawalpindi. Additionally, from a security standpoint sensitive material sites are carefully chosen, in safe areas and within quick reach of designated rapid reaction forces, which are specially trained and operate under command of the security division of SPD. Although Pakistan’s system is not as sophisticated as the U.S. permissive action links (PALs), it is deemed reliable enough to preclude unauthorized arming or launching of its nuclear weapons.

Dummy locations are also reportedly employed to minimize the risks of destruction or capture. SPD Head Lieutenant-General Khalid Kidwai, in a lecture at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in October 2006, clarified that “no delegation of authority concerning nuclear weapons is planned.” The conclusion, therefore, is that centralized control is retained by the NCA at the Joint Services Headquarters. Beyond this clarification, operational control plans cannot be made public by any nuclear state and thus remain a national security secret, as was the case with the United States and other nuclear powers during the Cold War.

Khan, Feroz Hassan. Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb. Stanford University Press; Stanford. 2012. p. 331–2

Chinese aid to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program

Western sources claim that China had provided Pakistan with fissile material in exchange for centrifuge technology assistance. Zia-ul-Haq hoped to exploit the close relationship with the Chinese further in order to protect Pakistan from potential preventative attacks… [T]he impact of Israeli attack on Osirak and the crash of the centrifuges in 1981 forced Zia-ul- Haq to realize that the nuclear program was vulnerable not just to preventive strikes but also to natural calamities. Zia-ul- Haq then dispatched Lieutenant-General Syed Zamin Naqvi and A.Q. Khan to request bomb-grade fissile materials and bomb designs. Their visit bore fruit as Pakistan then received the Chinese CHIC-4 weapon design along with 50 kilograms of HEU in 1981, material sufficient for two bombs. A.Q. Khan confirmed in a purported 2004 letter to his wife, “The Chinese gave us drawings of the nuclear weapon, gave us 50 kg of enriched uranium, gave us 10 tons of UF6 (natural) and 5 tons of UF6(3%).”

According to A.Q. Khan’s accounts, the Chinese nuclear material was kept in storage until 1985. When Pakistan acquired its own uranium enrichment capability and wanted to return the fissile material, China responded that “the HEU loaned earlier was now considered as a gift … in gratitude” for Pakistan’s help with Chinese centrifuges. It was then that KRL “promptly fabricated hemispheres for two weapons and added them to Pakistan’s arsenal.”

Khan, Feroz Hassan. Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb. Stanford University Press; Stanford. 2012. p. 188 (typographical inconsistencies in original)

Basics of gas centrifuge uranium enrichment

[U]ranium enrichment is the process that separates U-235 from U-238 in order to increase the proportion of the former isotope. Separation is measured by the kilogram separative work unit (SWU), representing the amount of uranium processed and the degree to which it is enriched. The gas centrifuge exploits the mass difference between these two isotopes (three neutrons) by spinning uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6) at extraordinarily high speeds (twice the speed of sound), forcing the lighter U-235 to the center, where it can be “scooped off” at the top. These centrifuges must be arranged in cascades, or groups of centrifuges, as each cascade enriches the material only slightly before feeding it into the next. Although this process may sound fairly simple, the specialized materials and precision engineering necessary are very difficult to achieve.

The necessary ingredient for the enrichment process, UF6, must be free of any impurities, as impurities may condense and trigger blockages in the valves and piping of the cascades, causing the centrifuges to crash. Once this gas is produced with the highest degree of purity, it is then ready to be fed into the centrifuge, a machine made of many complex parts. The main components are (1) rotor and end caps; (2) bearing and suspension systems; (3) electric motor and power supplies; (4) center post, scoops, and baffles; (5) the vacuum system; and (6) the casing. The first challenge is to acquire the specialized materials for these parts. High-strength, corrosion-resistant materials, such as maraging steel, aluminium alloys, titanium, glass-fiber resins, or carbon fiber, are essential for most of the aforementioned components. Maraging steel specifically provides not only protection but also the capacity for faster rotor speed.

The second challenge is to construct a perfectly balanced centrifuge rotor (an almost impossible task) that can rotate at supercritical speeds (about 100,000 rpm). In addition to the complex engineering necessary for the construction of other centrifuge parts, a method must be devised to control the temperature and convection in the vacuum. Now imagine replicating this precision engineering in cascades of about three thousand centrifuges.

Khan, Feroz Hassan. Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb. Stanford University Press; Stanford. 2012. p. 142