Budget Savings from Eliminating ICBMs, Reducing Arsenal

On the radar: Triad costs getting prohibitive; Romney on an Iranian dirty bomb; Iran’s decreased 20% stockpile; Ashton talks talks; TVA shies away from MOX; and Iran can’t stand it, knows you planned it.

September 18, 2012 | Edited by Benjamin Loehrke

Deconstructing the triad - The U.S. could save hundreds of millions per year and avoid $50 billion in modernization costs if it eliminated its ICBM force and accelerated reductions in the sub-based force, write Ajay Patel and Rear Admiral Ben Wachendorf (USN, Ret.) in Defense News.

--”Replacing all three legs of the triad with more weapons than we need will take money away from more important defense programs and add to our crushing debt.”

--Their recommended nuclear force: Immediately reduce the SSBN force to 10 or 11 subs with 16 launch tubes and eliminate all 550 Minuteman III ICBMs. Back of the envelope: That puts the total deployed arsenal at approximately 1000 warheads. http://bit.ly/OAWOmc

Dirty bomb? - A leaked video of Mitt Romney speaking at a private fundraiser shows the presidential candidate making some eyebrow-raising statements about policy. David Corn at Mother Jones has the video. Pasted below without comment is the nuclear section of Mitt Romney’s remarks.

--“If I were Iran, if I were Iran—a crazed fanatic, I'd say let's get a little fissile material to Hezbollah, have them carry it to Chicago or some other place, and then if anything goes wrong, or America starts acting up, we'll just say, "Guess what? Unless you stand down, why, we're going to let off a dirty bomb." I mean this is where we have—where America could be held up and blackmailed by Iran, by the mullahs, by crazy people. So we really don't have any option but to keep Iran from having a nuclear weapon,” said Mitt Romney. http://bit.ly/S26vQF

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Underreported - In a little reported development in Iran’s nuclear program, Iran’s stockpile of 20% enriched uranium actually shrank as Iran converted the material into fuel plates for the Tehran Research Reactor. “In spite of the growth in the gross amount of 20% enriched uranium produced during the latest quarter, Iran was no closer to being able to achieve sufficient weapons grade uranium for a bomb,” writes Greg Thielmann at Arms Control Now. The latest IAEA report also shows Iran made little progress expanding its number of advanced centrifuges.

--”Iran does not appear ready to move quickly to put a useable nuclear arsenal in place...Whether one focuses on the glass half-full or half-empty, it is clear from the latest IAEA statistics that an Iranian nuclear threat is not yet imminent.” http://bit.ly/RniKrg

Talking talks - EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton meets with Iran’s nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili today in Istanbul to talk about the way forward for nuclear talks. "While it is not a formal negotiating round, the meeting will be an opportunity to stress once again to Iran the need for an urgent and meaningful confidence-building step," said the EU spokeswoman, Maja Kocijancic. The Wall Street Journal has the story. http://on.wsj.com/PvZXGm

Plea deal - “Swiss Nuclear Smugglers Who Helped CIA Foil Libya program set to escape jail in plea bargain.” From AP. http://wapo.st/OazUYw

How it played - “US Purchases Nuke Components Online.” That is how Press TV, Iran’s state-run media corporation, wrote up its extremely narrow summary of Dana Priest’s series on the U.S. nuclear complex in The Washington Post. http://bit.ly/UhnZFi

MOX - The Tennessee Valley Authority appears to be stepping away from using MOX plutonium fuel in its nuclear reactors, meaning the troubled MOX production program still has no customers for its product. This gives reason to “put the brakes on the entire MOX program and halt construction of the $6 billion MOX plant to nowhere,” said Tom Clements of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. The Aiken Leader has the story. http://bit.ly/PDEFF4

It’s a Sabotage? - The power lines to Iran’s Fordow enrichment facility were sabotaged a month ago, according to Iran’s nuclear chief Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani. In his remarks on the event, Abbasi-Davani suggests the IAEA was somehow involved in the reported incident. Fredrik Dahl at Reuters has the story. http://reut.rs/NzQlMy

Tweet - @FitzpatrickIISS: #Iran's accusations against the IAEA are a new low. Increasingly cornered, they are lashing out wildly.