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The May 23 fire burned itself out after an hour or two, and multiple safety systems prevented any threat of an accidental launch of the Minuteman III missile, Maj. Laurie Arellano said. She said she was not allowed to say whether the missile was armed with a nuclear warhead at the time of the fire.
Arellano said the Air Force didn't know a fire had occurred until May 28, when a repair crew went to the launch site — about 40 miles east of Cheyenne, Wyo., and 100 miles northeast of Denver — because a trouble signal indicated a wiring problem.
She said the flames never entered the launch tube where the missile stood and there was no danger of a radiation release.
The fire, blamed on a faulty battery charger, burned a box of shotgun shells, a shotgun and a shotgun case that were kept in the room, Arellano said. A shotgun is a standard security weapon at missile silos.
Arellano said the battery chargers at all U.S. missile launch site have been replaced.
She said the incident wasn't reported sooner because of the complexity of the investigation.
The damage from the fire was estimated at $1 million, including the cost of replacing damaged equipment and cleanup.
An Air Force report of the incident released Thursday found flaws in the technical orders for assembling battery charger parts, inspection procedures and modifications of the launch complex ventilation system. It was also critical of the presence of flammable materials.
Cheyenne Mayor Jack Spiker, who said he learned of the incident when contacted by a reporter Thursday, said the fire doesn't undermine his confidence in the safety of the missile operations.
"It's rare that they have an accident, and the accidents have never really, that I know of, amounted to much because of the safety devices that are built into the system," he said.
The revelation was the latest in a string of embarrassing missteps involving the nation's nuclear arsenal. In 2006, four electrical fuses for ballistic missile warheads were mistakenly shipped to Taiwan, and in 2007, a B-52 bomber was mistakenly armed with six nuclear-tipped missiles when it flew between Air Force bases in North Dakota and Louisiana.
The Air Force announced last week it was setting up a new Global Strike Command to better manage its nuclear-capable bombers and missiles.
DAN ELLIOTT
The U.S. Congress on Wednesday approved a deal ending a three-decade ban on U.S. nuclear trade with India, unleashing billions of dollars of investment and drawing the world’s second most populous country closer to the West.
The Bush administration says the pact will secure a strategic partnership with the world’s largest democracy, help India meet its rising energy demand and open up a market worth billions.
While Delhi would place its non-military nuclear facilities under international safeguards, critics say the deal contains loopholes that could allow India to divert resources to its nuclear weapons programme.
Richard Lugar, the top Republican on the Senate foreign relations committee, said the deal cemented a “very important partnership for world peace”.
Congressional approval of the deal also signals an impressive resurrection for an agreement that on many occasions appeared on the verge of unravelling.
“The interesting thing is how many times it came close to death,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association and strong critic of the agreement. “This was not an overwhelming slam dunk.”
To many in the Indian establishment, the deal signifies a triumph over decades of “nuclear apartheid” – during which India was denied access to foreign nuclear energy technology as punishment for testing nuclear weapons – that gives it rightful recognition as an acceptable nuclear weapons power. On a more practical level, many in business hope the deal will help India overcome its chronic power shortages, which are a major bottleneck to its economic aspirations.
With the global nuclear embargo on India already lifted, at Washington’s urging, by the recent decision of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, Areva, the French energy firm, is in talks with the Nuclear Power Corporation of India to sell it two nuclear reactors.
But even in India, the deal is not without its critics and the controversy over the deal, which had threatened the survival of the government of Manmohan Singh is unlikely to fade away.
India’s leftist parties – which withdrew their support from Mr Singh’s Congress-led coalition over the issue, prompting a major government crisis, remain staunchly opposed to an agreement that they believe subordinates New Delhi to US power, especially in foreign policy.
With Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, expected in New Delhi on Saturday to sign the deal, leftist parties have said they will observe “a black day against this surrender to US imperialism,” by hoisting black flags, and wearing black badges while the deal is signed.
And with elections due by the end of May, left parties have already said that they will give their support to any government willing to reverse the deal, suggesting that battles will continue even through the implementation phase.
India and Europe in civil nuclear accord
The European Union and India are to co-operate more closely on civil nuclear research and development as a way of strengthening a partnership that has often been seen as falling short of its potential.
Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, and Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, announced the agreement on Monday at an EU-India summit that also produced promises of closer co-ordination of climate change and energy security policies.
The EU-Indian nuclear initiative followed a landmark vote last Saturday in the US House of Representatives that helped clear the way for India to buy nuclear power plants, technology and fuel in the US.
India, officially a nuclear weapons power since 1998, has been denied access to civilian nuclear technology for more than 30 years because of its test of a nuclear device in 1974 and its refusal to sign the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Like the US administration, the EU takes the view that India, as a friendly democracy sharing many common values, should not be ostracised but encouraged to develop civilian nuclear energy and to assume its responsibilities as one of the world’s nuclear powers.
“France has confidence in India,” Mr Sarkozy said.
France, current holder of the EU presidency, is the member state with the most extensive experience of civilian nuclear power. It is keen to exploit the commercial opportunities presented by India’s need for new sources of energy to fuel its rapid economic expansion.
The US-Indian nuclear deal has been three years in the making and is on the brink of receiving final approval from the Senate.
By raising the bar for western strategic co-operation with India, the deal exposed Europe’s relatively low profile – trade issues aside – in New Delhi.
The EU and India said they planned to boost their joint work in the international thermonuclear experimental reactor (Iter) project, a French-based scheme to test environment-friendly, electricity-producing fusion power plants.
They also said they would sign a separate agreement between New Delhi and Euratom, the EU’s atomic energy agency, on fusion energy research.
However, the EU and India will be unable to conclude a trade accord by the end of this year, as once hoped, and remain at loggerheads on key issues in the Doha talks on liberalising world trade.
Mr Singh, noting that the EU-India summit had produced agreement on co-operation in clean coal technologies and solar energy, told reporters: “I am extremely satisfied . . . The holding of annual summits reflects the great importance both sides place on this strategic relationship.”
He said the EU and India had set themselves the goal of signing the trade deal by the end of 2009 and increasing total trade turnover to €100bn ($144bn, £80bn) five years from now. The 27 nation bloc’s trade with India amounted to just less than €56bn last year.
American warships on Monday surrounded an arms-laden freighter hijacked by pirates, sealing off any possible escape in a standoff near the craggy Somalia coastline.
Lt. Nathan Christensen, a Navy spokesman, said that “several destroyers and missile cruisers” had joined the American destroyer that was already following the hijacked vessel. He would not specify the number of warships or what they would do if the pirates refused to surrender.
“Our intent is for the ship not to offload any of its cargo,” he said, referring to the 33 battle tanks and large supply of grenade launchers and ammunition now in the hands of the pirates.
The ship, operated by a Ukrainian arms supplier, was hijacked Thursday in
And the controversy over where exactly the tanks were going has heated up again.
Two Western diplomats in
One of the diplomats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said there may have been a secret arms deal in which Kenya would be a transit point for the weapons to be taken by train from the port of Mombasa and then out of the country. “I can tell you these tanks were not for Kenya,” the diplomat said.
The Kenyan government has denied this. On Monday, a government spokesman, Alfred Mutua, said: “We buy weapons all the time. I don’t see what the big deal is.”
He also characterized the pirates, in a statement, as “a ragtag terrorism unit.”
Ukrainian tanks, though, are a relative anomaly in Kenya, which has been a close ally of the United States and Britain for decades and has been equipped with Western-made weapons. Mr. Mutua acknowledged this, saying most of Kenya’s tanks were “old British tanks.”
But, he added, the Ukrainian tanks were cheaper.
“We choose who we buy from,” he said. “And we buy equipment from all over the world.”
Kenya recently bought several Chinese-made trucks to transport troops.
The first news reports on Friday regarding the hijacked ship said the arms were headed for south Sudan, which is an autonomous region of Sudan that fought a long separatist war against the northern Sudanese government.
There are currently American sanctions and a United Nations arms embargo against Sudan, though American officials said that the application of these sanctions was complicated and that it might not be illegal for Kenya to provide tanks to south Sudan. United Nations officials said that in the past few years several large arms shipments have passed through Kenya en route to south Sudan. Often, the weapons are moved across the border at night.
Andrew Mwangura, program coordinator for the Seafarers’ Assistance Program in Kenya, which tracks pirate attacks, called the Ukrainian ship “a tricky vessel.”
He said, “The tanks were for Sudan, and the Kenya government doesn’t want to admit it because of the embargo.”
Mr. Mwangura was among the first maritime officials last week to disclose that the hijacked cargo ship was crammed with weapons. He said his organization monitors shipping in the Indian Ocean and has contacts around the world. He said the weapons aboard the ship included ammunition made from depleted uranium, which is dangerous to handle and typically used to pierce armor.
The pirates holding the ship have said they are not interested in the cargo and will release it and the 20 crew members if they are paid a ransom of $20 million in cash. One crew member died, and the pirates attributed the death to natural causes.
In addition to the American warships, a Russian frigate was on its way.
Somalia’s waters are considered the world’s most dangerous. More than 50 ships have been attacked this year. Many are still being held for ransom.
US Navy watches seized ship with Sudan-bound tanks
U.S. helicopters on Monday buzzed a hijacked Ukrainian cargo ship carrying 33 Soviet-designed tanks and other weapons that officials fear could end up in the hands of al-Qaida-linked militants in Somalia if the pirates are allowed to escape.
Thursday's seizure of the MV Faina off Somalia, a failed state seen as a key battleground in the war on terrorism, could bring dangerous effects across the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.
Piracy has become a lucrative criminal racket in impoverished Somalia, bringing in millions of dollars in ransom.
The pirates aboard the blue-and-white Ukrainian-operated freighter are demanding $20 million to release the ship, its 21 crew members, one of whom has died of an apparent heart attack, and its cargo of T-72 tanks, rifles and ammunition.
The ship, now anchored off Somalia's coast near the central town of Hobyo, apparently was destined for Sudan when armed pirates overtook it, likely from a speedboat, and climbed up the side of the ship.
"We maintain a vigilant watch over the ship and we will remain on station while negotiations between the pirates and the shipping company are going on," Lt. Nathan Christensen, a deputy spokesman for the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, told The Associated Press.
Although the pirates have not been allowed to take anything off the Faina, they have been allowed to resupply, one U.S. official said when asked if those aboard needed anything such as food. The official declined to comment on whether the negotiations between the pirates and the shipping company are being monitored.
U.S. Navy destroyers and cruisers have been deployed within 10 miles of the hijacked vessel and helicopters were circling overhead because of "great concern" over the possibility of the cargo falling "into the wrong hands," Christensen said. At one point on Sunday, the captain of the Faina said a warship was about two miles away.
"Our goal is to ensure the safety of the crew, to not allow off-loading of dangerous cargo and to make certain Faina can return to legitimate shipping," said Rear Adm. Kendall Card, commander of the task force monitoring the ship.
Although analysts say the pirates will likely be unable to unload the tanks, the other military hardware or a huge ransom could exacerbate the two-decade-old civil war in a country where nearly every building is pockmarked with bullet holes and all major civil institutions have crumbled.
The U.S. fears the armaments may end up with al-Qaida-linked Islamic insurgents who have been fighting the shaky, U.N.-backed Somali transitional government since late 2006, when they were driven out after six months in power. More than 9,000 people have been killed in the Iraq-style insurgency, most of them civilians.
Mark Bellamy, senior fellow in the Africa program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the pirates "are more interested in the money than disposing of the cargo."
"There's theoretically a possibility these weapons can fall into the wrong hands, but what is al-Qaida going to do with tanks in Somalia?" he said.
Christensen said the arms shipment was destined for Sudan — not Kenya, which had been claiming to be the arms' destination. "We are aware that the actual cargo was intended for Sudan, not Kenya," he said.
The 5th Fleet said the ship was headed for the Kenyan port of Mombasa, but that "additional reports state the cargo was intended for Sudan."
U.N. officials said there is no blanket arms embargo on Sudan's government, but any movement of military equipment and supplies into the Darfur region would violate a U.N. arms embargo if it were not first requested by the government and approved by the Security Council's Sudan sanctions committee.
The United States has expressed opposition to all arms transfers to Sudan, which it considers a state sponsor of terrorism. U.S. officials also have warned that the transfer of lethal military equipment to state sponsors of terrorism could lead to sanctions under U.S. law.
A Western diplomat in Nairobi, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the media, said the shipment was destined for autonomous southern Sudan — not Darfur — and did not violate the embargo.
Bellamy said it was not illegal to send weapons to the north or south Sudanese governments.
"There are lots of ways that weapons can get into Sudan, and this happens to be one boatload," Bellamy said. "The bigger thing is this continuing problem of piracy. It's been escalating for three years and they're becoming more brazen and emboldened. They're being paid and they then turn around and step up activities."
Jervasio Okot, spokesman for southern Sudan's mission to Kenya, said officials there were "surprised" to hear reports that the tanks and arms were destined for their region.
"Our government has no contract for the importation of arms with the Russian or Ukrainian governments," Okot said.
U.S. intelligence reports said the cargo's ultimate destination was Sudan and that Kenya was only a transit point, said a Western official in Washington who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing classified material.
Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Valentyn Mandriyevsky said the ministry was not participating in the arms trade and didn't know where the cargo was bound. A spokesman for Ukraine's arms trader, Ukrspetexport, would not comment.
The 5th Fleet said the Faina is owned and operated by Kaalbye Shipping Ukraine. A woman who answered phone at the Odessa-based shipping company and declined to identify herself said the company was not involved with the Faina.
Ukrainian and Russian media have said the Faina is operated by Tomex Team, a company based in Odessa. Its representatives have repeatedly declined to comment.
A Russian-based registry indicates the ship, sailing under a Belize flag, is also owned by Tomex Team. It lists the owner as Waterlux AG, with a Panama address but the Odessa phone number of Tomex Team, which it indicates is a subsidiary.
Russia dispatched a warship to the area, and it will take about a week to get there. The Neustrashnimy, or Intrepid, was in the Atlantic near the English Channel on Monday and will have to go through the Strait of Gibraltar, the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal to get to the Somali coast, said Capt. Igor Dygalo, a spokesman for the Russian navy.
At the United Nations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the world body should "organize a kind of cooperation between the naval forces of the countries that want to make their practical contribution to put an end to piracy in the area of the African Horn."
Christensen said the U.S. Navy maintains "standard bridge-to-bridge communication" with Faina's crew via radio, but stressed that they are not taking part in or facilitating any negotiations.
The 21-member crew was from Ukraine, Russia and Latvia. A Latvian Foreign Ministry spokesman said one man from Latvia was a "non-citizen," a term authorities typically refer to ethnic Russians who have not obtained Latvian citizenship.
There have been 24 reported attacks in Somalia this year, according to the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center. In June, the U.N. Security Council voted to allow international warships to enter Somali waters to combat the problem, but its 1,880-mile coastline — the longest in Africa — remains virtually unpoliced.
Nick Brown, the editor of Jane's International Defense Review, said it was unlikely the pirates would be able to use the tanks without specialized training and mechanics.
Mogadishu's arms markets are teeming with heavy weapons — including rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47s and mortars. >>>>
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· System does not work yet
· US also reaches agreement with Czech government
"We have crossed the Rubicon," the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Thursday, referring to US consent to
In an interview on news channel TVN24, Tusk said the
He said the deal also includes a "mutual commitment" between the two nations to come to each other's assistance "in case of trouble."
The clause on mutual assistance appeared to be a direct and potent reference to
However,
In past days, Polish leaders said that the war justified
But after the deal was announced, both US and Polish officials attempted to play down any connection to the Georgian war.
"This is not linked to the situation in
In
In initial reaction from
He also said that plan targets
After Tusk announced the deal, it went through an initial signing ceremony late Thursday in
At the signing,
"Only evil people should be afraid of our agreement," Sikorski told reporters after Rood and his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Kremer, initialed the agreement at the Foreign Ministry.
The
Three ballistic missile crew members in
The probe found that the missile launch codes were outdated and remained secure at all times. But the July 12 incident comes on the heels of a series of missteps by the Air Force that had already put the service under intense scrutiny.
"This was just a procedural violation that we investigated," said Air Force Col. Dewey Ford, a spokesman at Peterson Air Force Base in
The lapse, which involved a crew based at Minot Air Force Base, was serious enough, however, to prompt an investigation by the 91st Missile Wing, in conjunction with codes experts at the 20th
And it delivers another blow to the beleaguered Air Force.
Last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a sweeping shake-up of the Air Force leadership, blaming them for failing to fully address a series of nuclear-related mishaps.
At the time, Gates said his decisions to sack the Air Force secretary and chief of staff were based mainly on the blistering conclusions of an internal report on the mistaken shipment to
He also linked the underlying causes of that slip-up to the August incident in which a B-52 bomber was mistakenly armed with six nuclear warheads and flown from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base in
No one has been punished yet in the latest
Ford and other Air Force officials said the Minot-based crew had code devices that were no longer usable, since new codes had been installed in the missiles.
The three crew members, who are in the 91st Missile Wing, were in the missile alert facility about 70 miles from
Officials said the three officers were behind locked doors and had with them the old code components, which are large classified devices that allow the crew to communicate with the missiles. Launch codes are part of the component, and the devices were described as large, metal boxes.
Ford said they were waiting to get back to base "and they fell asleep."
It is not clear how long they were asleep.
There are periodic, regularly scheduled code changes, and there was a crew of four on duty. One of the crew members was not in the room with the other three at the time they fell asleep, the Air Force said.
The investigation concluded that the codes had remained secured in their containers, which have combination locks that can only be opened by the crew. The containers remained with the crew at all time, and the facility is guarded by armed security forces.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., called the series of nuclear missteps involving Minot Air Force Base disappointing and unfortunate.
"This appears to me to be an incident in which codes were not compromised but some rules were broken, and those broken rules were reported," Dorgan said. "This does not appear to me to be equal to flying an airplane loaded with nuclear weapons halfway across the county — that was extraordinarily serious.
"I don't think this is an issue about the base — I think it's an issue about personnel," Dorgan said. "There have obviously been management and command problems at this base and the Air Force has made some command changes to respond to it."
Col. Bruce Emig was ousted following the August flight of the B-52 bomber.
"The violation was reported and it required reporting, and the airmen did their duty to report it," Dorgan said, referring to the latest incident.
North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven, who spoke with Air Force officials Thursday about the matter, said the
"They told me procedural violations do occur periodically," he said.
But Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo. and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, called the incident very troubling. "The new Air Force leadership, when confirmed, must take decisive and urgent steps to restore the culture of respect that our strategic weapons deserve and our national security demands," said Skelton.
Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, has been nominated to be the next Air Force chief of staff, and Michael Donley, for secretary. During their Senate confirmation hearing this week both men vowed to work to restore trust and confidence in the service.
The 91st missile wing has control of several facilities, including 150 intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Faced with growing international pressure, the Pentagon is changing its policy on cluster bombs and plans to reduce the danger of unexploded munitions in the deadly explosives.
The policy shift, which is outlined in a three-page memo signed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, would require that after 2018, more than 99 percent of the bomblets in a cluster bomb must detonate.
Limiting the amount of live munitions left on the battlefield would lessen the danger to innocent civilians who have been killed or severely injured when they accidentally detonate the bombs.
Also, by next June the Defense Department will begin to reduce its inventory of cluster bombs that do not meet the new safety requirements.
The new Defense Department plan comes more than a month after 111 nations, including many of
Opponents have complained that the Pentagon has moved too slowly to reduce the cluster munitions from its inventory.
Cluster bombs scatter hundreds of smaller explosives over a large area, where those bomblets can sit for years until they are disturbed and explode.
At the time, Cmdr. Bob Mehal, a Pentagon spokesman, said the elimination of cluster bombs from the
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who has led efforts to outlaw cluster munitions, said the Pentagon's move is a step back. A defense policy issued by then-Defense Secretary William Cohen in early 2001, Leahy said, called for a similar reduction in submunitions from the cluster bombs by 2005.
"Now the Bush administration's 'new' policy is to wait another 10 years," said Leahy, calling it "another squandered opportunity for
The use of cluster bombs has seen opposition in Congress, which last year passed a one-year ban on
The new Pentagon policy appears to plan for a possible end to that ban. The memo states that until 2018, the Defense Department would seek to transfer cluster munitions that don't meet the new 1 percent failure rate to other foreign governments. Any transfer would require that the foreign government not use them after 2018, and the sale would have to be "consistent with
The policy defends the use of the cluster bombs as effective weapons that "provide distinct advantages against a range of targets and can result in less collateral damage" than other weapons.
And the memo concludes by saying that "blanket elimination of cluster munitions is unacceptable" and commanders will use them in accordance with the law and international agreements "in order to minimize their impact on civilian populations."
A June report by the Congressional Research Service questioned whether it is feasible to design a bomb that will indeed detonate to the planned level of more than 99 percent.
"While such a high level of performance might be achievable under controlled laboratory conditions," the report said, other uncontrollable circumstances, such as landing in soft ground or getting caught in a tree or vegetation, could result in more unexploded duds.
According to the congressional report, the U.S. dropped more than 1,200 cluster bombs — containing nearly 250,000 submunitions — in Afghanistan from 2001-2002. And the U.S. and British forces used about 13,000 of the bombs — with more than 1.8 million bomblets — during the first three weeks of combat in the Iraq war.
When the international treaty was adopted, backers predicted that the
International leaders expect to sign the treaty in December.
The PAC-3 Patriot interceptor will be fired at
The test comes as
The planned test "aims to confirm the functions of the Patriot system that has been upgraded with ballistic missile defense capabilities," the ministry said.
The Pentagon will buy and operate one or two commercial imagery satellites and plans to design and build another with more sophisticated spying capabilities, according to government and private industry officials.
The satellites could spy on enemy troop movements, spot construction at suspected nuclear sites and alert commanders to militant training camps.
The Broad Area Space-Based Imagery Collector satellite system, or BASIC, will cost between $2 billion and $4 billion. It would add to the secret constellation of satellites that now circle the Earth, producing still images that are pieced together into one large mosaic.
A single satellite can visit one spot on Earth once or twice every day. BASIC's additional satellites will allow multiple passes over the same sites, alerting
The announcement of the BASIC program, expected this week, has been delayed for months, with Pentagon, Air Force and National Reconnaissance Office officials fighting over who should be in charge of buying, building and operating the satellites. They have also debated whose needs the system will cater to: senior military commanders or policymakers in
At stake was not just money but power: Billion-dollar budgets are up for grabs, and the agencies' traditional missions and ways of doing business have been hanging in the balance.
The National Reconnaissance Office ultimately won the right to buy and operate the satellites, besting the Air Force. And military commanders' needs trumped the White House. They will, for the first time, have the opportunity to dictate what satellites will photograph when they pass overhead. The concept is known as "assured tasking."
"The battlefield today is so dynamic the warfighter needs to be able to respond at a moment's notice. Knowing they have the opportunity to have assured tasking in the next pass of satellite becomes very critical and helpful in the planning of their operations," Josh Hartman, the Pentagon director for space and intelligence capability acquisition, told The Associated Press.
Military commanders have long desired that kind of tasking control. Now, they submit their requests to a national intelligence authority that prioritizes the missions. And sometimes those requests are delayed or rejected.
The new satellite system is meant to bridge what intelligence agencies fear will become a gap caused by the cancellation in September 2005 of a major component of the Future Imagery Architecture system overseen by the National Reconnaissance Office. Prime contractor The Boeing Co., headquartered in
The Pentagon hopes BASIC will fill in some of the lost capabilities in key ways:
_It will increase the amount of imagery the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency buys from commercial satellite companies GeoEye of Dulles,
The
_The National Reconnaissance Office will buy, launch and operate one or two imagery satellites with 16-inch resolution similar to those in use by GeoEye and DigitalGlobe, probably around 2014. A solicitation for proposals will be issued shortly.
_NRO will design and build another more advanced satellite to be launched in 2018. The capability of that satellite, known as Block II, will be defined later.
Underpinning this will be the creation of a ground intelligence station that will not only download the imagery directly from the satellites and make it available to all users, but will also — in theory — allow the users to tap into the national intelligence database that holds imagery produced by all spy equipment and sources such as satellites, aircraft and ground sensors.
The Pentagon's plan to both buy commercial satellite imagery and operate similar satellites of its own is an attempt to balance two competing goals. National space policy requires the Pentagon to buy as much commercial imagery as possible to help the companies withstand competition from subsidized foreign satellite companies. At the same time the Pentagon does not want to give the companies so much business that they tailor their services to government needs and ignore the private sector they need to make them self-supporting.
The Pentagon satellites will also be a backup capability in case future commercial satellites malfunction.
The nation's classified network of satellites represents some of the most expensive government programs and receives almost no public oversight. Because of their multibillion-dollar price tags, sensitive missions and lengthy development schedules, spy agencies go to great pains to keep details from becoming public.
But if history is an indicator, the price tag could climb much higher as the new satellite and ground components are built. The House and Senate intelligence committees have criticized the Pentagon and intelligence agencies' management of space programs. Half the programs have experienced cost growth of 50 percent or more.
The Defense Department spends about $20 billion annually on space programs.
The most powerful atom-smasher ever built could make some bizarre discoveries, such as invisible matter or extra dimensions in space, after it is switched on in August.
But some critics fear the Large Hadron Collider could exceed physicists' wildest conjectures: Will it spawn a black hole that could swallow Earth? Or spit out particles that could turn the planet into a hot dead clump?
Ridiculous, say scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN — some of whom have been working for a generation on the $5.8 billion collider, or LHC.
"Obviously, the world will not end when the LHC switches on," said project leader Lyn Evans.
David Francis, a physicist on the collider's huge ATLAS particle detector, smiled when asked whether he worried about black holes and hypothetical killer particles known as strangelets.
"If I thought that this was going to happen, I would be well away from here," he said.
The collider basically consists of a ring of supercooled magnets 17 miles in circumference attached to huge barrel-shaped detectors. The ring, which straddles the French and Swiss border, is buried 330 feet underground.
The machine, which has been called the largest scientific experiment in history, isn't expected to begin test runs until August, and ramping up to full power could take months. But once it is working, it is expected to produce some startling findings.
Scientists plan to hunt for signs of the invisible "dark matter" and "dark energy" that make up more than 96 percent of the universe, and hope to glimpse the elusive Higgs boson, a so-far undiscovered particle thought to give matter its mass.
The collider could find evidence of extra dimensions, a boon for superstring theory, which holds that quarks, the particles that make up atoms, are infinitesimal vibrating strings.
The theory could resolve many of physics' unanswered questions, but requires about 10 dimensions — far more than the three spatial dimensions our senses experience.
The safety of the collider, which will generate energies seven times higher than its most powerful rival, at Fermilab near
By contrast, a CERN team this month issued a report concluding that there is "no conceivable danger" of a cataclysmic event. The report essentially confirmed the findings of a 2003 CERN safety report, and a panel of five prominent scientists not affiliated with CERN, including one Nobel laureate, endorsed its conclusions.
Critics of the LHC filed a lawsuit in a Hawaiian court in March seeking to block its startup, alleging that there was "a significant risk that ... operation of the Collider may have unintended consequences which could ultimately result in the destruction of our planet."
One of the plaintiffs, Walter L. Wagner, a physicist and lawyer, said Wednesday CERN's safety report, released June 20, "has several major flaws," and his views on the risks of using the particle accelerator had not changed.
On Tuesday, U.S. Justice Department lawyers representing the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation filed a motion to dismiss the case.
The two agencies have contributed $531 million to building the collider, and the NSF has agreed to pay $87 million of its annual operating costs. Hundreds of American scientists will participate in the research.
The lawyers called the plaintiffs' allegations "extraordinarily speculative," and said "there is no basis for any conceivable threat" from black holes or other objects the LHC might produce. A hearing on the motion is expected in late July or August.
In rebutting doomsday scenarios, CERN scientists point out that cosmic rays have been bombarding the earth, and triggering collisions similar to those planned for the collider, since the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago.
And so far, Earth has survived.
"The LHC is only going to reproduce what nature does every second, what it has been doing for billions of years," said John Ellis, a British theoretical physicist at CERN.
Critics like Wagner have said the collisions caused by accelerators could be more hazardous than those of cosmic rays.
Both may produce micro black holes, subatomic versions of cosmic black holes — collapsed stars whose gravity fields are so powerful that they can suck in planets and other stars.
But micro black holes produced by cosmic ray collisions would likely be traveling so fast they would pass harmlessly through the earth.
Micro black holes produced by a collider, the skeptics theorize, would move more slowly and might be trapped inside the earth's gravitational field — and eventually threaten the planet.
Ellis said doomsayers assume that the collider will create micro black holes in the first place, which he called unlikely. And even if they appeared, he said, they would instantly evaporate, as predicted by the British physicist Stephen Hawking.
As for strangelets, CERN scientists point out that they have never been proven to exist. They said that even if these particles formed inside the Collider they would quickly break down.
When the LHC is finally at full power, two beams of protons will race around the huge ring 11,000 times a second in opposite directions. They will travel in two tubes about the width of fire hoses, speeding through a vacuum that is colder and emptier than outer space.
Their trajectory will be curved by supercooled magnets — to guide the beams around the rings and prevent the packets of protons from cutting through the surrounding magnets like a blowtorch.
The paths of these beams will cross, and a few of the protons in them will collide, at a series of cylindrical detectors along the ring. The two largest detectors are essentially huge digital cameras, each weighing thousands of tons, capable of taking millions of snapshots a second.
Each year the detectors will generate 15 petabytes of data, the equivalent of a stack of CDs 12 miles tall. The data will require a high speed global network of computers for analysis.
Wagner and others filed a lawsuit to halt operation of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC, at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in
The leafy campus of CERN, a short drive from the shores of
"There is a huge army of scientists who know what they are talking about and are sleeping quite soundly as far as concerns the LHC," said project leader Evans.
NASA unveiled a beefed-up redesign of a proposed moon rocket Wednesday, saying the Ares V spacecraft that is to carry astronauts to the lunar surface in 12 years will be around 38 stories tall and carry a heftier load than originally planned.
The rocket is to be about 20 feet longer than a previous design and have six main engines at its base, instead of five. Engineers said they also decided to enlarge the twin solid-rocket boosters that will be bolted to its side so it can hold more fuel and carry more supplies and equipment than first envisioned.
Steve Cook, manager of the Ares project office at the
The Ares V was first planned to be 361 feet long, or about the size of the original Saturn V moon rocket. But Cook said the redesigned Ares V will be 381 feet long — or roughly as tall as a 38-story building.
Part of the Constellation program, the rocket will be capable of carrying four astronauts, a lunar lander and other equipment to a landing anywhere on the moon. In all, NASA said it expects Ares V would be able to send more than 156,600 pounds of cargo to the moon and, someday, Mars.
"We've looked at over 1,700 different Ares concepts," Cook told reporters at a briefing.
He added that officials balanced cost, safety, reliability and performance factors in creating the new design.
The changes were announced after a nine-month study to determine if NASA could meet its goal of returning to the moon. In a statement, Constellation program manager Jeff Hanley said the review showed astronauts can be back on the moon by 2020.
"This extensive review proves we are ready for the next phase: taking these concepts and moving forward," he said.
Cook said major work on Ares V would begin in 2010 after the space shuttle is retired.
Unlike the Apollo program, in which the mammoth Saturn V rocket lifted astronauts and all their equipment into orbit at once, the Constellation program plans a two-step process for getting aloft.
Astronauts will ride into orbit in a capsule aboard a reusable rocket called Ares I. Once there, they will dock with an orbiting Earth departure stage that was carried by an Ares V rocket and head to the moon with a lunar lander, cargo and supplies.
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