THE JASONS PART I Pentagon Cancels Contract for JASON Advisory Panel
Posted on Apr.10, 2019 in Dept of Defense, Science by Steven Aftergood
Updated below

In a startling blow to the system of independent science and technology advice, the Department of Defense decided not to renew its support for the JASON defense science advisory panel, it was disclosed yesterday.

“Were you aware that [the JASON contract] has been summarily terminated by the Pentagon?”

That was one of the first questions asked by Rep. Jim Cooper, chair of the House Armed Services Committee Strategic Forces Subcommittee, at a hearing yesterday (at about 40’20”).

NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty replied that she was aware that the Pentagon had taken some action, and said that she had asked her staff to find out more. She noted that NNSA has an interest in maintaining the viability of the JASON panel, particularly since “We do have some ongoing studies with JASON.”

In fact, JASON performs technical studies for many agencies inside and outside of the national security bureaucracy and it is highly regarded for the quality of its work.

So why is the Pentagon threatening its future?

Even to insiders, the DoD’s thought process is obscure and uncertain.

“To understand it you first have to understand the existing contract structure,” one official said. “This is a bit arcane, but MITRE currently has an Indefinite Delivery / Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract with the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the purpose of which is to manage and operate the JASON effort. However, you don’t actually do anything with an IDIQ contract; rather, the purpose of the IDIQ contract [is to] have Task Orders (TO’s) placed on it. These TO’s are essentially mini-contracts in and of themselves, and all the actual work is performed according to the TO’s. This structure allows any government agency to commission a JASON study; conceptually, all you need to do is just open another TO for that study. (The reality is slightly more complicated, but that’s the basic idea).”

“The underlying IDIQ contract has a 5-year period of performance, which just expired on March 31. Last November, OSD started the process of letting a new 5-year IDIQ contract with essentially the same structure so that the cycle could continue. They decided to compete the contract, solicited bids, and were going to announce the contract award in mid-March. Instead, what happened is that about two weeks ago (March 28, two days before the expiration of the existing IDIQ contract) they announced that they were canceling the solicitation and would not be awarding another contract at all. Instead, they offered to award a single contract for a single study without the IDIQ structure that allows other agencies to commission studies.”

But “I do not know the reason” for the cancellation, the official said.

And so far, those who do know are not talking. The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Research and Engineering) “would not answer any questions or discuss the matter in any way whatsoever.”

The news was first reported in “Storied Jason science advisory group loses contract with Pentagon” by Jeffrey Mervis and Ann Finkbeiner in Science magazine, and was first noticed by Stephen Young.

The JASON panel has performed studies (many of which are classified) for federal agencies including the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, as well as the Census Bureau and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Lately, the Department of Agriculture denied a Freedom of Information Act request for a copy of a 2016 JASON report that it had sponsored entitled “New Techniques for Evaluating Crop Production.” The unclassified report is exempt from disclosure under the deliberative process privilege, USDA lawyers said. That denial is under appeal.

The Pentagon move to cancel the JASON contract appears to be part of a larger trend by federal agencies to limit independent scientific and technical advice. As noted by Rep. Cooper at yesterday’s hearing, the Navy also lately terminated its longstanding Naval Research Advisory Committee.

Update, 4/25/19: National Public Radio and Defense News reported that the National Nuclear Security Administration has posted a solicitation to take over the JASON contract from the Department of Defense.
https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2019/04/pentagon-jason/

Pentagon's Independent Science Research Group, the Jasons, Is Set to Disband After 59 Years

Matt Novak 

4/25/19 11:15am
Filed to: JASONS

An aerial view of the Pentagon in the mid-1960s

Photo: Brian Parker/U.S. Military

The Jason Group, an independent panel of academics who have advised the Pentagon for the past 59 years, will likely disband on April 30. The group had hoped to get a one-year extension to continue its work.

The Jasons was founded in 1960 as a scientific advisory panel that helped the Pentagon solve some of the most complex problems facing the U.S. military. The early days of the Jasons focused primarily on physics problems, but over the last six decades, the panel’s roughly 50 members have expanded their research to include studies on topics like artificial intelligence, health care, and climate change.

The Jason contract is managed by the MITRE Corporation, which allowed the group’s contract with the Department of Defense to expire on March 31, 2019. The Jasons advise other agencies like the Department of Energy, but without MITRE’s sponsorship, the group will have to dissolve completely and end all current studies for the DOE and other agencies by April 30.

“The department has determined that the requirements previously supported through JASON National Security Research Studies have changed and that the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, Research and Engineering will require only one study, rather than multiple studies, as projected under the previous solicitation,” Pentagon spokeswoman Heather Babb told Gizmodo via email. “Because our requirements have changed, the DOD does not anticipate issuing a follow-on Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ).”

That means that the next meeting of the Jasons will likely be their last. And the group’s snacks won’t even be paid for during their farewell, according to one member.

“There is a very real chance that the Jason advisory group will effectively be disbanded shortly after the spring meeting, under circumstances that will make its recovery unlikely,” Ellen Williams, vice chair of the Jasons, told Science magazine in an article published on Wednesday. “This is despite the indication of intent at high levels across the U.S. government to resolve the present situation by extending the Jason contract for 1 year.”

The Jasons were formerly sponsored by Darpa and had a near-death experience back in 2002 when the group was pushed out by then-Darpa director Tony Tether. But the group found a new sponsor with the MITRE Corporation that allowed the panel to continue its work.

Journalist Ann Finkbeiner’s 2006 book The Jasons: The Secret History of Science’s Postwar Elite, details the storied history of the organization, including some of its most controversial work done during the Vietnam War. But despite previous controversies, the Jasons were widely regarded as a much-needed independent voice that could speak freely with the Pentagon when other advisors might just tell U.S. military leaders what they wanted to hear. That adversarial voice was sometimes criticized by the military establishment as a hippie mindset.

“The Jasons were, and I don’t mean to be insulting to them, but let’s just say peaceniks,” former Darpa director of the 1970s Steve Lukasik told me in 2015 for a story about the use of computers during the Vietnam War.

Some Fellow researchers in other areas of government see the disbanding of the Jasons as a mistake. Nickolas Roth, who studies nuclear policy at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, told Gizmodo earlier this month that losing the Jasons would be “profoundly misguided” and a “significant loss” of expert voices that are needed right now.

But it looks like this is the end for the Jasons and their 60-year history of independent research. And the military is doing its best to position this as a simple way to save money

“The department remains committed to seeking independent technical advice and review,” Pentagon spokeswoman Heather Babb told Gizmodo. “This change is in keeping with this commitment while making the most economic sense for the department, and it is in line with our efforts to gain full value from every taxpayer dollar spent on defense.”

Perhaps the Pentagon should become acquainted with the phrase, “penny wise, pound foolish.”

• 
  

Call it “The Jason Mystery.” No, not Jason Bourne, Matt Damon’s tortured cinematic assassin. This would be Jason, the independent but less-than-widely known group of top-level experts that has long studied security-related science and technology matters for the US Defense and Energy departments and the intelligence community.

Science reported this week that the Defense Department has told the MITRE Corporation, a nonprofit that manages the Jason contract with Defense, to “close up shop by April 30.” Begun in the 1950s and named for the Golden Fleece-seeking character of Greek mythology, the Jasons (as they sometimes are referenced) have over five decades produced a wide variety of classified and unclassified reports on thorny security issues, from the state of the US nuclear deterrent to ways that carbon dioxide emissions might be measured for climate treaty purposes. (The Federation of American Scientists has an interesting selection of non-classified Jason studies here.)

So far, I have seen no official explanation for the Jason contract cancellation, which was met with Twitter blasts of exasperation from experts who know the value of Jason research.

Stephen Young@StephenUCS

BREAKING NEWS!! Just confirmed by Hill staff: Pentagon has terminated the contract of JASON, the independent science advisory group that Congress & the public rely on for assessment of many technical issues. This is a travesty & will lead to more ill-informed, bad government.

8,149

3:45 PM - Apr 9, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Hans Kristensen

✔@nukestrat

Extraordinary stupid and self-defeating decision. JASON has been invaluable over the decades to provide science-focused analysis and recommendations on defense programs. Without that, DOD and Congress will have difficult time making sound decisions.

Perhaps that’s the point...

Stephen Young@StephenUCS

BREAKING NEWS!! Just confirmed by Hill staff: Pentagon has terminated the contract of JASON, the independent science advisory group that Congress & the public rely on for assessment of many technical issues. This is a travesty & will lead to more ill-informed, bad government.

The import of the end of the Jasons’ Defense contract is perhaps best summarized by a few paragraphs from a New York Times review of science writer Ann Finkbeiner’s book, The Jasons: The Secret History of Science’s Post-war Elite.

Jason (the term refers both to the group as a whole and to individual members) was conceived in the late 1950’s, when the physicist John Wheeler proposed assembling a few dozen top academic scientists to give the government no-holds-barred advice. In 1960 the group began gathering each June and July in various locations. Physics was still riding the wave of prestige generated by the Manhattan Project, and all the original Jasons were physicists. …

Those who eventually enlisted included giants like [Freeman] Dyson, Murph Goldberger and the future Nobel laureates Steven Weinberg, Val Fitch, Charles Townes, Murray Gell-Mann and Leon Lederman. Some of their motives, like serving their country and reducing the threat of nuclear war, were altruistic. Others were less so: becoming an insider with access to secret information; finding “sweet” solutions to technical puzzles (to borrow Robert Oppenheimer’s description of the Manhattan Project); and getting paid ($850 per diem today).

The Jasons interviewed take pride in some of their accomplishments. They have excelled at “lemon detection,” finding the flaws in ideas like “dense pack” nuclear-missile sites, which one Jason, Sid Drell, called “dunce pack.” In the 1980s, Jason helped establish a Department of Energy program to improve the accuracy of climate models. In 1996 Bill Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, in part because Jason had concluded that tests were no longer needed to ensure the viability of America’s nuclear arsenal.

The Jasons certainly have been fallible. Some of the group’s Vietnam-era studies (including one on the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons) were excoriated on ethical grounds, a judgment with which even some of the scientists involved later came to agree. Even so, a decision that could mark an end to the Jason era of unblinkered expert advice to America’s security services would seem to call for public discussion, and perhaps even congressional inquiry.

Publication Name: Science

Pentagon Slams Door On Nuclear Weapons Stockpile Transparency

The Pentagon has decided not to disclose how many nuclear warheads it keeps in its stockpile, such as this W76 thermonuclear ballistic missile warhead.

Posted on Apr.17, 2019 in Arms Control, Nuclear Notebook, Nuclear Weapons, Secrecy, United States by Hans M. Kristensen

By Hans M. Kristensen

The Pentagon has decided not to disclose the current number of nuclear weapons in the Defense Department’s nuclear weapons stockpile. The decision, which came as a denial of a request from FAS’s Steven Aftergood for declassification of the 2018 nuclear weapons stockpile number, reverses the U.S. practice from the past nine years and represents an unnecessary and counterproductive reversal of nuclear policy.

The United States in 2010 for the first time declassified the entire history of its nuclear weapons stockpile size, a decision that has since been used by officials to support U.S. non-proliferation policy by demonstrating U.S. adherence to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), providing transparency about U.S. nuclear weapons policy, counter false rumors about secretly building up its nuclear arsenal, and to encourage other nuclear-armed states to be more transparent about their arsenals.

Click on graph to view full size

Importantly, the U.S. also disclosed the number of warheads dismantled each year back to 1994. This disclosure helped document that the United States was not hiding retired weapons but actually dismantling them. In 2014, the United States even declassified the total inventory of retired warheads still awaiting dismantlement at that time: 2,500.

The 2010 release built on previous disclosures, most importantly the Department of Energy’s declassification decisions in 1996, which included – among other issues – a table of nuclear weapons stockpile data with information about stockpile numbers, megatonnage, builds, retirements, and disassemblies between 1945 and 1994. Unfortunately, the web site is poorly maintained and the original page headlined “Declassification of Certain Characteristics of the United States Nuclear Weapon Stockpile” no longer has tables, another page is corrupted, but the raw data is still available here. Clearly, DOE should fix the site.

The decision in 2010 to disclose the size of the stockpile and the dismantlement numbers did not mean the numbers would necessarily be updated each subsequent year. Each year was a separate declassification decision that was announced on the DOD Open Government web site. The most recent decision from 2018 in response to a request from FAS showed the stockpile number as of September 2017: 3,822 stockpiled warheads and 354 dismantled warheads.

The 2017 number was extra good news because it showed the Trump administration, despite bombastic rhetoric from the president, had continued to reduce the size of the stockpile (see my analysis from 2018).

Since 2010, Britain and France have both followed the U.S. example by providing additional information about the size of their arsenals, although they have yet to disclose the entire history of their warhead inventories. Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea have not yet provided information about the size or history of their arsenals.

FAS’ Role In Providing Nuclear Transparency

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) has been tracking nuclear arsenals for many years, previously in collaboration with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The 5,113-warhead stockpile number declassified by the Obama administration in 2010 was only 13 warheads off the FAS/NRDC estimate at the time.

We provide these estimates on our web site, on our Strategic Security Blog, and in publications such as the bi-monthly Nuclear Notebook published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the annual nuclear forces chapter in the SIPRI Yearbook. The work is used extensively by journalists, NGOs, scholars, parliamentarians, and government officials.

With the Pentagon decision to close the books on the stockpile, and the rampant nuclear modernization underway worldwide, the role of FAS and others in documenting the status of nuclear forces will be even more important.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The Pentagon’s decision not to disclose the 2018 nuclear weapons stockpiled and dismantled warhead numbers is unnecessary and counterproductive.

The United States or its allies are not suffering or at a disadvantage because the nuclear stockpile numbers are in the public. Indeed, there seems to be no rational national security factor that justifies the decision to reinstate nuclear stockpile secrecy.

The decision walks back nearly a decade of U.S. nuclear weapons transparency policy – in fact, longer if including stockpile transparency initiatives in the late-1990s – and places the United States is the same box as over-secretive nuclear-armed states, several of which are U.S. adversaries.

The decision also puts the United States in an even more disadvantageous position for next year’s nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference where the administration will be unable to report progress on meeting its Article VI obligations. Instead, this decision, as well as decisions to withdraw from the INF treaty, start producing new nuclear weapons, and the absence of nuclear arms control negotiations, needlessly open up the United States to criticism from other Parties to the NPT – a treaty the United States needs to protect and strengthen to curtail nuclear proliferation.

The decision also puts U.S. allies like Britain and France in the awkward position of having to reconsider their nuclear transparency policies as well or be seen to be out of sync with their largest military ally at a time of increased East-West hostilities.

With this decision, the Trump administration surrenders any pressure on other nuclear-armed states to be more transparent about the size of their nuclear weapon stockpiles. This is curious since the Trump administration had repeatedly complained about secrecy in the Russian and Chinese arsenals. Instead, it now appears to endorse their secrecy.

The decision will undoubtedly fuel suspicion and worst-case mindsets in adversarial countries. Russia will now likely argue that not only has the United States obscured conversion of nuclear launchers under the New START treaty, it has now decided also to keep secret the number of nuclear warheads it has available for them.

Finally, the decision also makes it harder to envision achieving new arms control agreements with Russia and China to curtail their nuclear arsenals. After all, if the United States is not willing to maintain transparency of its warhead inventory, why should they disclose theirs?

It is yet unclear why the decision not to disclose the 2018 stockpile number was made. There are several possibilities:

• Is it because the chaos and incompetence in the Trump administration have enabled hardliners and secrecy zealots to reverse a policy they disagreed with anyway?
• Is it a result of the Nuclear Posture Review’s embrace of Great Power Competition with Cold War-like instincts to increase reliance on nuclear weapons, kill arms control treaties, increase secrecy, and scuttle policies that some say appease adversaries?
• Is it because of a Trump administration mindset opposing anything created by president Obama?
• Or is it because the United States has secretly begun to increase the size of its nuclear stockpile? (I don’t think so; the stockpile appears to have continued to decrease to now at or just below 3,800 warheads.)

The answer may be as simple as “because it can” with no opposition from the White House. Whatever the reason, the decision to reinstate stockpile secrecy caps a startling and rapid transformation of U.S. nuclear policy. Within just a little over two years, the United States under the chaotic and disastrous policies of the Trump administration has gone from promoting nuclear transparency, arms control, and nuclear constraint to increasing nuclear secrecy, abandoning arms control agreements, producing new nuclear weapons, and increasing reliance on such weapons in the name of Great Power Competition.

This is a historic policy reversal by any standard and one that demands the utmost effort on the part of Congress and the 2020 presidential election candidates to prevent the United States from essentially going nuclear rogue but return it to a more constructive nuclear weapons policy.

This publication was made possible by generous contributions from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the New Land Foundation, the Ploughshares Fund, and the Prospect Hill Foundation. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the authors.

Author Info


Hans M. Kristensen is the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists where he provides the public with analysis and background information about the status of nuclear forces and the role of nuclear weapons.

Secrecy News

Pentagon Blocks Declassification of 2018 Nuclear Stockpile

Posted on Apr.17, 2019 in Declassification, Dept of Defense by Steven Aftergood

For the first time in years, the Department of Defense has denied a request to declassify the current size of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.

“After careful consideration. . . it was determined that the requested information cannot be declassified at this time,” wrote Andrew P. Weston-Dawkes of the Department of Energy in a letter conveying the DoD decision not to disclose the number of warheads in the U.S. arsenal at the end of Fiscal Year 2018 or the number that had been dismantled.

The Federation of American Scientists had sought declassification of the latest stockpile figures in an October 1, 2018 petition. It is this request that was denied.

Because the current size of the U.S. nuclear stockpile constitutes so-called “Formerly Restricted Data,” which is a classification category under the Atomic Energy Act, its declassification requires the concurrence of both the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense. In this case, DOE did not object to declassification but DOD did.

 *    *    *

The size of the current stockpile was first declassified in 2010. It was one of a number of breakthroughs in open government that were achieved in the Obama Administration. (Until that time, only the size of the historic stockpile through 1961 had been officially disclosed, which was done in 1993.)

“Increasing the transparency of our nuclear weapons stockpile, and our dismantlement, as well, is important to both our nonproliferation efforts and to the efforts we have under way to pursue arms control that will follow the new START treaty,” said a Pentagon official at a May 2010 press briefing on the decision to release the information.

In truth, the size of the U.S. nuclear stockpile was not such a big secret even when it was classified. Before the 2009 total of 5,113 warheads was declassified in 2010, Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris of FAS had estimated it at 5,200 warheads. Likewise, while the 2013 total turned out to be 4,804 warheads, their prior open source estimate was not too far off at 4,650 warheads.

But even if it is partly a formality, classifying stockpile information means that officials cannot publicly discuss it or be effectively questioned in public about it.

*    *    *

But why now? Why is the Pentagon reverting to the pre-Obama practice of keeping the total stockpile number and the number of dismantled weapons classified? Why could the FY 2017 total (3,822 warheads) be disclosed, while the FY 2018 total cannot?

No reason was provided in the latest denial letter, and none of the decision makers was available to explain the rationale behind it.

But another official said the problem was that one of the main purposes of the move to declassify the stockpile total — namely, to set an example of disclosure that other countries would follow — had not been reciprocated as hoped.

“Stockpile declassification has not led to greater openness by Russia,” the official said.

“Anyway, it’s not a bilateral world anymore,” he said. And so DoD would also be looking for greater transparency from China than has been realized up to now.

Have new U.S. nuclear weapons programs played a role in incentivizing greater secrecy? “I doubt it,” this official said. “If anything, it’s the reverse. The US government has a motive to make it clear where it’s headed.”

*    *    *

“I think we should have more communication with Russia,” said U.S. Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the retiring Supreme Allied Commander Europe. “It would ensure that we understand each other and why we are doing what we’re doing.”

But for now, that’s not the direction in which things are moving, and not only with respect to stockpile secrecy. See “US-Russia chill stirs worry about stumbling into conflict” by Robert Burns, Associated Press, April 14.

Special Report:

China's furtive underwater nukes test the Pentagon
By Greg Torode and David Lague

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Recent visitors to the bay surrounding a submarine base on the southern coast of China's Hainan Island describe a curious nocturnal phenomenon. Powerful spotlights are sometimes trained directly on the ocean frontages of neighboring hotels at night, making visibility out to sea virtually impossible. Some of the lights are mounted on land and others on passing naval patrol boats.

"The effect is incredible," said one recent visitor. "The glare is so great you can hardly stand it on the balcony. You go inside and draw the curtains tight."


The blinding lights cannot obscure something of intense interest to the world's military intelligence agencies: evidence that China has made a breakthrough in its drive to rival America and Russia as a nuclear arms power.

Satellite imagery reveals the regular presence of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines at the strategic base near the resort city of Sanya. Specialized surface warships and aircraft designed to protect the subs are prowling key waterways off the coast. Facilities at the base appear to have been built to store and load ballistic missiles. Antenna arrays that support the hunt for foreign submarines have appeared on Chinese-held islands in the hotly contested South China Sea. And a veteran submariner has been appointed to command Chinese forces in the south of the country.

Taken together, this means China has a force of missile submarines that can launch nuclear attacks from beneath the waves and now appear to be heading out on patrols, according to serving and retired naval officers, diplomats and security analysts. That gives Beijing something it has until recently lacked: a more reliable "second strike" capability if its land-based nuclear arsenal comes under attack.

After six decades of battling to master complex and challenging subsea military technologies, China has joined the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom and France in the nuclear ballistic missile submarine club. In its most explicit assessment so far of this Chinese capability, the Pentagon in its latest annual report on China's military, published in August, said that Beijing now has a "credible" and "viable" sea-based nuclear deterrent.

Nuclear-powered Type 094A Jin-class ballistic missile submarine of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy is seen during a military display in the South China Sea An effective fleet of nuclear ballistic missile submarines, known as SSBNs, marks a dramatic boost to China's nuclear capabilities. Each of China's four Jin-class submarines is armed with up to 12 ballistic missiles that can carry a nuclear warhead with an estimated range of 7,200 kilometers (about 4,500 miles), according to the Pentagon. That would put the United States within striking distance from the Western Pacific. Analysts at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies estimate these missiles could fly at least 8,000 kilometers. The U.S. believes China has up to 100 nuclear missiles based on land.

Beijing's enhanced nuclear capability is one of the hallmarks of Chinese leader Xi Jinping's ambitious revamping of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the world's largest fighting force. China's nuclear submarine fleet, Western strategists say, has added to the challenge that the increasingly powerful Chinese military poses to U.S. dominance in Asia.

"The opposing side can never be exactly sure that it knows where all of the submarines are," said Peter Horobin, a retired Australian submarine commander and veteran of the Cold War battles to detect and monitor Soviet subs.

China's Ministry of National Defense, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and the Pentagon did not respond to questions from Reuters.

It is still unclear if the Chinese are deploying fully armed submarines to maintain a round-the-clock deterrent, as the other ballistic missile submarine powers do. Some analysts doubt China has advanced that far.

But the United States and its allies are behaving as if China has. Western military officials say privately that in operational terms, America and its allies - including Japan, Australia and the United Kingdom - are already attempting to track the movements of China's missile submarines as if they are fully armed and on deterrence patrols.

Asked about their role in tracking Chinese subs, Japan and the United Kingdom said they don't comment on operational details.

"China's military modernization is consistent with its rapid economic growth," the Australian Department of Defense said. "As with all countries, we encourage China to be transparent about its military capabilities and strategic intentions to provide greater assurance to its neighbors."

GROWING STOCKPILE

"An armed Jin-class SSBN will give China an important strategic capability that must be countered," Admiral Harry Harris, then head of the U.S. Pacific Command, told a congressional committee last year.

That response appears to be happening. The United States and its allies are expanding their anti-submarine naval deployments across East Asia. This includes stepped-up patrols of America's advanced, sub-hunting P-8 Poseidon planes out of Singapore and Japan.

With its relatively small force of nuclear missiles, Beijing has always worried that it might be vulnerable to a debilitating first strike. These fears were magnified as Chinese military planners watched Washington employ precision-guided weapons in conflicts like the Gulf wars, Afghanistan, Syria and the Balkans.

As it strengthens and improves its nuclear arsenal, Beijing is the only major nuclear power to be adding warheads to its stockpiles. China is developing an air-launched ballistic missile and plans to build a long-range stealth bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons. With the sea-based second-strike deterrent in place, those programs suggest Beijing eventually intends to field a triad of air, sea and land-based nuclear weapons like the United States and Russia.

In the past two decades, the PLA Rocket Force, the service which controls China's nuclear and conventional missiles, has invested heavily in expanding its stockpile of nuclear warheads and boosted the range and accuracy of the missiles that deliver them. It has also hardened the protection of its silo-based nuclear weapons, according to reports in China's state-controlled media. The Pentagon and official Chinese military publications have reported that China has also deployed modern, road-mobile missiles that are more difficult for an adversary to find and attack.

Still, China lags far behind the United States and Russia in overall nuclear firepower. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that China has a total of 280 nuclear warheads. China does not disclose how many of its warheads are deployed and ready for conflict. The United States has 1,750 deployed warheads and Russia 1,600, the institute's 2018 report said. The United States and Russia each have thousands more warheads held in stockpiles, according to the report.

Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project of the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists, said he had yet to see hard intelligence suggesting China had placed fully armed ballistic missiles on its submarines at sea, despite the intense activity. Just because the submarines exist, he said, "that doesn't mean that they have the weapons aboard the vessels."

While acknowledging that China has significantly enhanced its nuclear deterrence, the Pentagon isn't convinced that Chinese subs are yet conducting around-the-clock patrols. In a January report, the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency said the Chinese navy would need a minimum of five Jin-class submarines to maintain a continuous nuclear deterrence at sea. China now has four.

UNDERSEA DUELS

A fleet of nuclear missile submarines hidden in the vast expanses of the ocean would help offset Beijing's nuclear shortcomings, say Chinese and Western strategists.

Chinese naval designers and nuclear technicians have been working to build a force of nuclear missile submarines since the late 1950s. A single vessel was launched in the 1980s, but it was never fully operational. This submarine served as a test bed as Chinese technicians and designers struggled to overcome problems with nuclear propulsion technology, missiles and excessive noise that would have made the vessels easier for an adversary to detect and target.

To maximize its second-strike capability, China's missile subs would need to be stealthy enough to go undetected as they sail to their patrol areas in the open ocean. U.S. and other foreign naval analysts say the Jin-class submarines are a sharp improvement over China's earlier efforts, but they remain less stealthy than their U.S., Russian, French and British counterparts.

The 11,000-tonne Jin-class submarines are stationed on the southern coast of China's Hainan Island, close to deep water channels leading into and out of the South China Sea. The geography of China's coastal waters has forced Beijing to base its missile submarines in this area, astride one of the world's most important shipping lanes.

In the north, the Yellow Sea is too shallow to conceal big, ballistic missile submarines. The East China Sea is deeper but it's confined by the Korean Peninsula, Japan's island chain and Taiwan.

And Japanese and U.S. forces can deploy advanced anti-submarine warfare ships and aircraft based in Japan to closely monitor these waters and the channels that pass out into the Western Pacific, where the submarines are ultimately headed. The Chinese need to reach these waters to be in a position to fire on the United States.

The South China Sea, by contrast, is much bigger and in parts deeper, making it more suitable for concealed submarine operations, according to Western submariners with extensive experience of patrolling in this area.

China would need to get its submarines out of Hainan, past surveillance and into seas east of the Philippines for their missiles to be in striking range of the United States. This is a key reason why China has gone to such lengths to reclaim and fortify islands and reefs in the South China Sea that are expanding Beijing's control over this area, according to Western submariners and military attaches.

The sub fleet's vulnerability to detection also explains China's extreme sensitivity to the surveillance operations of the United States and its allies in these waters. A Chinese destroyer sailed within 45 meters of the American destroyer USS Decatur in late September, as the American warship patrolled in the Spratlys, a highly contested island chain where China has expanded its foothold in recent years. It was the latest in a series of close encounters in the past decade.

China now appears to be on guard against foreign subs attempting to detect and shadow its ballistic missile fleet. As China's Jin-class vessels put to sea, they appear to be flanked by protective screens of surface warships and aircraft on station to track foreign submarines, according to military officers and analysts familiar with allied surveillance of the Chinese coast.

Serving and former senior naval officers also point to the extensive, frequent deployments of the Chinese navy's latest Type 056A corvettes into key waters south of Japan and east of the Philippines. The Type 056A is China's most advanced submarine hunter. It is able to tow sonar arrays and other listening equipment deep beneath the surface to detect enemy submarines – advanced technology that China did not have just five years ago.

China has also installed an array of sensors, antennas and satellite communications installations on islands in the Spratlys, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The PLA is tracking the foreign undersea hunters from the air, too. It has formed a squadron of Y-8GX6 aircraft on Hainan with the ability to comb vast areas of the sea surface for magnetic anomalies. The turboprop planes have already been seen landing on Woody Island, China's key offshore holding in the South China Sea. These patrols are not the infrequent exercises of the past, but now near-constant deployments, shadowing foreign warships as well.

"We're looking at them looking for us," said one Western military attache.

FURTIVE FORCE

The submarine base near Sanya is now under direct control of the Central Military Commission, the top military decision-making body, chaired by Xi Jinping himself. The new communications installations in the South China Sea have helped knit together the new command structure, allowing tighter control from Beijing, right down to individual vessels.

In 2017, Beijing appointed a veteran submariner, Vice Admiral Yuan Yubai, to head the Southern Theater Command, which is responsible for the South China Sea. His promotion was a clear indication of the importance China attaches to supporting nuclear sub operations, according to Chinese naval experts. Yuan is the first naval officer to head a command of this type, a promotion that's part of a sweeping overhaul of the military structure by Xi Jinping.

Commercial satellite images of the submarine base give insight into the furtive force stationed there. They appear to show missile submarines regularly tied up alongside long piers in the harbor. Satellite images from Google Earth in June last year show what appear to be three Jin-class missile submarines at the base.

The vessels have a distinctive shape, with a hump-like structure that houses the missile tubes behind the sail, the vertical structure that rises from a submarine's hull. Clearly visible in the images: a partially submerged entrance to what appear to be underground submarine pens, beneath a hill next to the harbor.

Construction at the base near Sanya also points to the PLA's ability to stealthily arm submarine-launched missiles with nuclear warheads.

Western intelligence analysts familiar with satellite imagery of the area say a covered railway has been completed that runs into a hillside bunker – the suspected warhead arsenal. The railway in turn is linked by tunnels to the pens built for the submarines. This, they say, means the missiles can be armed and loaded on the submarines – without detection.

Rising China Sells More Weapons

Posted on May.03, 2019 in Arms Trade, China, Dept of Defense by Steven Aftergood

“In 2018, China’s arms sales increased, continuing a trend that enabled China to become the world’s fastest-growing arms supplier during the past 15 years,” according to the 2019 China Military Power report published by the Department of Defense. “From 2013 through 2017, China was the world’s fourth-largest arms supplier, completing more than $25 billion worth of arms sales.”

“Arms transfers also are a component of China’s foreign policy, used in conjunction with other types of military, economic aid, and development assistance to support broader foreign policy goals,” the Pentagon report said. “These include securing access to natural resources and export markets, promoting political influence among host country elites, and building support in international forums.”

Needless to say, the United States and other countries have long done the same thing, using arms exports as an instrument of foreign policy and political influence. Up to a point, however, US arms sales are regulated by laws that include human rights and other considerations. See U.S. Arms Sales and Human Rights: Legislative Basis and Frequently Asked Questions, CRS In Focus, May 2, 2019.

To assist soldiers in identifying Chinese weapons in the field, the US Army has produced a deck of “playing cards” featuring various weapons systems.

“The Worldwide Equipment Identification Playing Cards enable Soldiers to be able to readily identify enemy equipment and distinguish the equipment from friendly forces. Cards can be used at every level and across all services.” See Worldwide Equipment Identification Cards: China Edition, US Army TRADOC, April 2019.

Pentagon warns on risk of Chinese submarines in Arctic

Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Deepening Chinese activities in the Arctic region could pave the way for a strengthened military presence, including the deployment of submarines to act as deterrents against nuclear attack, the Pentagon said in a report released on Thursday.

The assessment is included in the U.S. military’s annual report to Congress on China’s armed forces and follows Beijing’s publication of its first official Arctic policy white paper in June.

In that paper, China outlined plans to develop shipping lanes opened up by global warming to form a “Polar Silk Road” - building on President Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative.

China, despite being a non-Arctic state, is increasingly active in the polar region and became an observer member of the Arctic Council in 2013. That has prompted concerns from Arctic states over Beijing’s long-term strategic objectives, including possible military deployments.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will attend the meeting of the eight-nation Arctic Council in Rovaniemi, Finland, starting on Monday, which comes amid concerns over China’s increased commercial interests in the Arctic.

The Pentagon report noted that Denmark has expressed concern about China’s interest in Greenland, which has included proposals to establish a research station and a satellite ground station, renovate airports and expand mining.

“Civilian research could support a strengthened Chinese military presence in the Arctic Ocean, which could include deploying submarines to the region as a deterrent against nuclear attacks,” the report said.

The Pentagon report noted that China’s military has made modernizing its submarine fleet a high priority. China’s navy operates four nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, six nuclear-powered attack submarines and 50 conventionally powered attack submarines, the report said.

“The speed of growth of the submarine force has slowed and (it) will likely grow to between 65 and 70 submarines by 2020,” the report predicted.

The report said China had built six Jin-class submarines, with four operational and two under construction at Huludao Shipyard.

In a January report, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency said the Chinese navy would need a minimum of five Jin-class submarines to maintain a continuous nuclear deterrence at sea.

The United States and its allies, in turn, are expanding their anti-submarine naval deployments across East Asia. This includes stepped-up patrols of America’s advanced, sub-hunting P-8 Poseidon planes out of Singapore and Japan.

TAIWAN CONTINGENCY
The expansion of China’s submarine forces is just one element of a broad, and costly, modernization of its military, which U.S. experts say is designed largely to deter any action by America’s armed forces.


Although Beijing’s official defense budget for 2018 was $175 billion, the Pentagon estimated that China’s budget actually topped $200 billion, when including research, development and foreign weapons procurement. It estimated that China’s official defense budget would likely grow to about $260 billion by 2022.

Much of China’s military doctrine is focused on self-ruled Taiwan, which Beijing sees as a renegade province.

On Jan. 2, Xi said in a speech that China reserved the right to use force to bring Taiwan under its control but would strive to achieve peaceful “reunification.”

The Pentagon report outlined a number of potential scenarios that China might take if Beijing decides to use military force on Taiwan, including a comprehensive campaign “designed to force Taiwan to capitulate to unification, or unification dialogue.”

But the U.S. analysis appeared to downplay prospects for a large-scale amphibious Chinese invasion, saying that could strain its armed forces and invite international intervention. It also noted the possibility of limited missile strikes.

“China could use missile attacks and precision air strikes against air defense systems, including air bases, radar sites, missiles, space assets, and communications facilities to degrade Taiwan’s defenses, neutralize Taiwan’s leadership, or break the Taiwan people’s resolve,” the report said.

China has repeatedly sent military aircraft and ships to circle the island on drills in the past few years and worked to isolate Taiwan internationally, whittling down its few remaining diplomatic allies.

It has also strongly objected to U.S. warship passages through the Taiwan Strait, which have greatly increased in frequency in the past year.

Taiwan’s military is significantly smaller than China’s, a gap that the Pentagon noted is growing year by year.

Recognizing the disparity, the Pentagon report noted: “Taiwan has stated that it is working to develop new concepts and capabilities for asymmetric warfare.”


Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali in Washington; Editing by James Dalgleish and Leslie Adler

ALSO SEE 

THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX (MIC)

AND THE PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY TODAY