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The Bush Administration has obtianed information that North Korea possesses at least three nuclear bombs as well as an undermined amount of fissile material.The officials said the material is being stored in underground bunkers kept off limits to both the United States or the International Atomic Energy Agency.Geostrategy Direct.com Backgrounder:Compiled by Bill Gertz U.S. Downgrades Saudi Arabia as secure oil sourceIran training Palestinians to use shoulder-fired missilesReconnaissance Photos Show Iraq Converting UN trucks to launchers for artillery, missilesSecret agenda for Arab summit is funding for the Palentinian war

A pledge by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to advance efforts this year to test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile received a blunt Twitter slap down Monday from President-elect Donald Trump: “It won’t happen!” “North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S.,” Trump tweeted. “It won’t happen!” In a subsequent post, the president-elect criticized China — North Korea’s closest ally and biggest trading partner — for not doing enough to rein in its unstable neighbor. “China has been taking out massive amounts of money & wealth...

U.S. commanders say country has capability to make weapons small and light enough. Tokyo • North Korea has been able to make its nuclear warheads small enough to fit onto ballistic missiles, the state media claimed Wednesday in Pyongyang's latest boast about improvements in its weapons capabilities. North Korea has made the claim before and it is not known whether it is true, but the timing of the announcement is inauspicious. The United States and South Korea are conducting huge military exercises that North Korea views as a pretext for an invasion. On Tuesday, South Korea unleashed a wave of...

OAK RIDGE - Four security guards at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant were fired after testing positive for steroids, a spokeswoman for Wackenhut Services Inc., the government's security contractor, confirmed Friday. The guards' union, however, is challenging two of the cases, claiming that the positive readings were linked to use of over-the-counter supplements. News of the drug firings comes just a few days after Wackenhut confirmed that three Y-12 guards had been suspended without pay for bringing electronic game devices into the inner sanctum of the high-security weapons facility. Security police officers at Y-12 are subject to regular and random...

For the first time, Russia, which is in the midst of a major strategic nuclear modernization, has more deployed nuclear warheads than the United States, according to the latest numbers released by the State Department. Russia now has 1,643 warheads deployed on intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers. The United States has 1,642, said the fact sheet released Wednesday.

North Korea has developed nuclear weapons capable of being launched on its ballistic missile forces, according to a new report by a defense analyst. The Obama administration is seeking to hide the fact that North Korea possesses nuclear missile warheads, according to a report by Mark Schneider, a former Pentagon strategic analyst and director for forces policy at the office of the secretary of defense. Schneider’s statement came in a report published April 28 in the journal Comparative Strategy. According to the 16-page report, “The North Korean Nuclear Threat to the United States,” the Defense Intelligence Agency stated in an...

Weaponry: As the commander in chief calls for a one-third reduction in our nuclear arsenal, Russia builds new midrange missile banned under a 1987 arms treaty. How's that "reset" button working out, Mr. President? Trust but verify, said the president who won the Cold War. Ronald Reagan's "peace through strength" philosophy has been replaced with the "peace through parchment" strategy of Barack Obama. It emphasizes flexibility, not resolve, and relies on pacts such as the New Start Treaty and the pressing of imaginary reset buttons. Russia's playing host to Edward Snowden, arguably a traitor with secrets to share with Moscow...

BRUSSELS, Belgium Sept. 30 A former pro soccer player who joined the al-Qaida terrorist network was convicted and sentenced to prison Tuesday for plotting to bomb a NATO base believed to contain nuclear weapons. Nizar Trabelsi of Tunisia, who once played professional soccer in Germany, received the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison from a court that also convicted 17 other men and acquitted five others in the largest terrorism trial in Belgium's history. Trabelsi admitted planning to drive a car bomb into the canteen of the Kleine Brogel air base, a Belgian military post used by NATO where...

North Korea is trying to develop small nuclear weapons that can be delivered by missiles or aircraft, South Korea's defence minister said Tuesday. Kim Tae-Young told lawmakers the North is "constantly seeking to make its nuclear weapons smaller" for possible future delivery by ballistic missiles or bombers. Kim said the North is also believed to have 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of bomb-making plutonium, slightly less than previous estimates by the United States. He said it is "quite possible" that Pyongyang is also building nuclear weapons through uranium enrichment in addition to its plutonium operation. "The more you test the weapons,...

In a June 27 interview on ABC's "This Week," CIA Director Leon Panetta warned that it could be a mere two years before Iran is able to threaten other states with nuclear warheads mounted on ballistic missiles. When discussing the new U.S. sanctions against Iran recently signed into law by President Barack Obama, Mr. Panetta said, "Will it deter them from their ambitions with regards to nuclear capability? Probably not." Three months ago the Defense Intelligence Agency reported that by 2015 Iran, with help from North Korea or Russia, could field an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the...

When it comes to nuclear weapons, oldies are goodies. Take, for example, the American B61 nuclear device. About the same shape as a 1,000 pound (455 kg) bomb, many NATO fighter bombers were equipped (with the electronics) to use this bomb during the Cold War (and many can still do so). Some 3,200 B61s were built since it entered service in the late 1960s, and about a third of those remain available for use. Some are to be refurbished, but politicians are still debating doing this just to keep B61s good for another two decades. Without the refurb, all these...

In the movie “Space Cowboys,” Clint Eastwood plays a test pilot/engineer who leads a group of aging astronauts on a mission to retrieve a nuclear-armed satellite, which had been put into space by a Soviet Union that then ceased to exist. It was, at least in small part, a case of art imitating life. During the Cold War, both superpowers contemplated the deployment of nuclear weapons in space. However, Moscow did more than contemplate. During the 1960s, the USSR had an operational system ready to go into orbit to attack the United States. This weapon was a combined low-flying missile...

Defense: The administration proudly reveals a state secret to our enemies before a U.N. conference on nuclear nonproliferation. It wants to lead by example on disarmament, but Iran and North Korea aren't following. Not since the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact that sought to outlaw war as an instrument of national policy has there been such a stunning display of dangerous naivete. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton disclosed U.S. nuclear secrets to the U.N. conference while proudly proclaiming it showed America is sending "a clear, unmistakable signal" that this nation is committed to nuclear disarmament. Kellogg-Briand laid the groundwork for Munich in...

enmity on the melt, uranium from what once were Russian nuclear warheads is used to heat and light American homes, thanks to the Megatons to Megawatts Program -- a successful example of nuclear non-proliferation. The 20-year agreement was signed back in 1994 between Russia and the United States. "Megatons to Megawatts is the most successful non-proliferation program in history," argues Philip Sewell, senior vice-president at USEC, a private US company that runs the agreement that turns highly enriched uranium into lightly enriched uranium. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, the administration of George H.W. Bush...

Hizbullah could tip its rocket arsenal with Iranian-supplied nuclear warheads, a report said. The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies stated that Iran could supply its proxies with tactical nuclear warheads. In a report, BESA said Iran was likely to use its nuclear arsenal to wage what the report termed "nuclear terrorism against Israel." "Rockets, such as those already in Hizbullah's possession, could be fitted with nuclear warheads." "The potential means of conducting nuclear terrorism against Israel would be similar to those applicable to other countries — sea, air, and land-based — with one important addition: rockets," the report, authored by...

Arms Deal: President Obama signs away U.S. nuclear security and gives the Russians a veto over whether we can defend ourselves. Our nuclear umbrella is in tatters as another piece of paper proclaims peace in our time. Completing a process of disarmament and appeasement that manifested itself in the dismantling and defunding of U.S. military power that began with his inauguration, President Obama signed a new strategic arms limitation treaty with a grinning and very happy Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday in the Czech capital. How fitting this document was signed in Prague, which isn't far from Munich where...

The Obama administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) was released today (which can be found here) and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Navy Adm. Mike Mullen held a brief press briefing at the Pentagon to discuss the NPR. The fundamental role of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear armed states, Gates said and that the U.S. will not threaten to use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear states that are party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. He said the administration didn’t believe it was far...

National Security: Aiming at a world where nuclear weapons are obsolete, the administration's nuclear posture review leaves a world without American nuclear weapons and the backbone to use them. After his stunning bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto lamented that all that had been accomplished was to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve. Under policies announced by the Obama administration, a devastating chemical or biological attack on this country might merely awaken our very own Hamlet and fill him with a terrible sense of angst. We have said before that rather...

In a challenge to the White House, the nation’s nuclear weapons laboratories have warned Congress that federal programs to extend the life of the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal are insufficient to guarantee the viability of the weapons for decades to come. The warning, which implicitly endorsed the idea of creating an expensive new generation of more reliable nuclear warheads, has no direct bearing on the new arms control agreement reached this week by the United States and Russia. Rather, it addresses a long-simmering debate on what steps the United States should take to ensure confidence in the destructive capacity of...

Deeply concerned as it is by the risk of a nuclear-armed Iran, Israel has never even hinted at using atomic weapons to forestall the perceived threat. But now a respected Washington think tank has said that low-radioactive yield "tactical" nuclear warheads would be one way for the Israelis to destroy Iranian uranium enrichment plants in remote, dug-in fortifications. Despite the 65-year-old taboo against carrying out -- or, for that matter, mooting -- nuclear strikes, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) says in a new report that "some believe that nuclear weapons are the only weapons that can destroy...