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AQ Kahn may sold Iran proven advanced warhead design

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  • AQ Kahn may sold Iran proven advanced warhead design

    My god. If this is true, it's no wonder the Iranians stopped weapons design work: They have a tested warhead design ready to mount on ballistic missiles as soon as the Uranium is refined!

    June 15, 2008
    Nuclear Ring Reportedly Had Advanced Design
    By DAVID E. SANGER

    WASHINGTON — American and international investigators say that they have found the electronic blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon on computers that belonged to the nuclear smuggling network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist, but that they have not been able to determine whether they were sold to Iran or the smuggling ring’s other customers.

    The plans appear to closely resemble a nuclear weapon that was built by Pakistan and first tested exactly a decade ago. But when confronted with the design by officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency last year, Pakistani officials insisted that Dr. Khan, who has been lobbying in recent months to be released from the loose house arrest that he has been under since 2004, did not have access to Pakistan’s weapons designs.

    In interviews in Vienna, Islamabad and Washington over the past year, officials have said that the weapons design was far more sophisticated than the blueprints discovered in Libya in 2003, when Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi gave up his country’s nuclear weapons program. Those blueprints were for a Chinese nuclear weapon that dated to the mid-1960s, and investigators found that Libya had obtained them from the Khan network.

    But the latest design found on Khan network computers in Switzerland, Bangkok and several other cities around the world is half the size and twice the power of the Chinese weapon, with far more modern electronics, the investigators say. The design is in electronic form, they said, making it easy to copy — and they have no idea how many copies of it are now in circulation.

    Investigators said the evidence that the Khan network was trafficking in a tested, compact and efficient bomb design was particularly alarming, because if a country or group obtained the bomb design, the technological information would significantly shorten the time needed to build a weapon. Among the missiles that could carry the smaller weapon, according to some weapons experts, is the Iranian Shahab III, which is based on a North Korean design.

    However, in recent days top American intelligence officials, who declined to speak about the discovery on the record because the information is classified, said that they had been unable to determine whether Iran or other countries had obtained the weapons design. Pakistan has refused to allow American investigators to directly interview Dr. Khan, who is considered a hero there as the father of its nuclear program. In recent weeks the only communications about him between the United States and Pakistan’s new government have been warnings from Washington not to allow him to be released.

    Dr. Khan’s illicit nuclear network was broken up in early 2004; President Bush declared that shattering the operation was a major intelligence coup for the United States. Since then, evidence has emerged that the network sold uranium enrichment technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, and investigators are still pursing leads that he may have done business with other countries as well.

    While Libya gave up its nuclear program, North Korea and Iran have not, despite intense international pressure, sanctions, and repeated offers of incentives to do so.

    On Sunday, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, said that the administration remained concerned about the possibility that additional plans have been disseminated, but he did not address any of the latest revelations about the Khan network.

    “We’re very concerned about the A.Q. Khan network, both in terms of what they were doing by purveying enrichment technology and also the possibility that there would be weapons-related technology associated with it,” he told reporters traveling with Mr. Bush from Paris to London on Sunday.

    “That was a concern. That’s one of the reasons we rolled up the network here three years or so ago, and fairly successfully. And part of that rolling up was to roll up the network and part of it was to pursue what kind of relationship the A.Q. Khan network had to individual countries with which they are dealing.”

    The existence of the compact bomb design began to become public in recent weeks after Switzerland announced that it had destroyed a huge stockpile of documents, including a weapons design, that were found in the computers of a family in Switzerland, the Tinners, who over the years played critical roles in Khan’s operation.

    In May, Switzerland’s president, Pascal Couchepin, announced that more than 30,000 documents had been shredded, saying the government acted to keep them from “getting into the hands of a terrorist organization or an unauthorized state,” according to Swiss news accounts.

    But American and I.A.E.A. officials say that destroying one copy of an electronic file was more satisfying to the Swiss than it was reassuring to them. It is unclear whether the Swiss knew that some of the same material had been found in other countries by I.A.E.A. investigators.

    Some details of the Swiss action and the bomb design have appeared recently in Swiss newspapers and The Guardian of London and in The Washington Post on Sunday.

    The Swiss have provided little information about exactly what they destroyed, but I.A.E.A. inspectors watched the destruction and American intelligence officials were deeply involved. “We were very happy they were destroyed,” one senior intelligence official said Friday. But he added that “what else is out there” remains a mystery. The Swiss destruction of the equipment came in response in the case of Urs Tinner, who has been in custody for more than four years but has not yet stood trial.

    Two former Bush administration officials said they believed Mr. Tinner had provided information to the Central Intelligence Agency while he was still working for Dr. Khan, including some of the information that helped American and British officials intercept shipments of centrifuges on their way to Libya in 2003.

    When news of that interception became public and Libya turned its $100 million program over to American and I.A.E.A. officials, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan forced Dr. Khan to issue a vague confession and then placed him under house arrest. Dr. Khan has since renounced that confession in Pakistani and Western media, saying he made it only to save Pakistan greater embarrassment.

    It was not until 2005 that officials of the I.A.E.A., which is based in Vienna, finally cracked the hard drives on the Khan computers recovered around the world. And as they sifted through files and images on the hard drives, investigators found tons of material — orders for equipment, names and places where the Khan network operated, even old love letters. In all, they found several terabytes of data, a huge amount to sift through.

    “There was stuff about dealing with Iranians in 2003, about how to avoid intelligence agents,” said one official who had reviewed it. But the most important document was a digitized design for a nuclear bomb, one that investigators quickly recognized as Pakistani. “It was plain where this came from,” one senior official of the I.A.E.A. said. “But the Pakistanis want to argue that the Khan case is closed, and so they have said very little.”

    In public statements, Pakistani officials have insisted that the Khan “incident,” as the call it, is now history, and they publicly declared nearly two years ago that their investigations are over.

    A senior Pakistani official, interviewed in Islamabad in April, said that the information provided by the I.A.E.A. was “vague and incomplete,” and he insisted that because Dr. Khan’s laboratories specialized in the manufacture of the equipment needed to enrich uranium, “he was not involved in weapons designs.”

    But investigators have no doubt that he was the source of the digitized bomb design. “Clearly, someone had tried to modernize it, to improve the electronics,” one said. “There were handwritten references to the electronics, and the question is, who was working on this?”

    The officials said that parts of the design were coded so that they could be transferred quickly to an automated manufacturing system for the production of parts.

    Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from London.
    Last edited by citanon; 16 Jun 08,, 00:02.

  • #2
    Dr Lewis's take


    Pakistani Design In Switzerland
    posted 3 hours ago under pakistan, iran by jeffrey

    Greetings from Beijing

    We now have David Albright’s essay on the advanced nuclear weapons design, as well as stories in the New York Times and Washington Post. (David Sanger, Nuclear Ring Reportedly Had Advanced Weapon, June 15, 2008; David Sanger and Bill Broad, Officials Fear Bomb Design Went to Others, June 16, 2008; Joby Warrick, Smugglers Had Design For Advanced Warhead, June 15, 2008.) There is a lot to sort through.

    I have only a few comments to add to James’s excellent post.

    This is the second design peddled by the AQ Khan network — and it seems to be considerably more advanced that the Chinese design found in Libya. (If you are interested in the Chinese design, which had a yield of 10 kilotons and mass of 500 kilograms, check out my post: More on Libya’s Bomb Design, October 8, 2005.)

    According to Sanger, the design “is half the size and twice the power of the Chinese weapon…” and, writing with Bill Broad, and happens to “bear a strong resemblance to weapons tested by Pakistan” in May 1998.

    The statement about 1/2 the size and 2x the yield is probably not true — though it may not matter very much. What does seem likely is that the device is small enough for the Nodong family, which includes Pakistan’s Ghuari and Iran’s Shahab.

    1/2 the Size

    In the second story, Sanger and Bill Broad describe the device as “miniaturized — using about half the uranium fuel of the older design to produce a greater explosive force.”

    Warrick describes the Chinese design as “bulky and difficult to deliver”; Sanger and Broad, “unwieldy but effective.” That language suggests the issue is not mass, but diameter.

    Note that half the diameter, half the mass and half the fissile material are all very different things. For example, a bomb with 1/2 the diameter would have 1/8 the mass.

    I find the fissile material statement plausible — Hibbs and Albright claim that Pakistan used about 15 kilograms of HEU in its design. Cutting that number in half is quite plausible — Paine and Cochran calculated that a state with medium technical skill could squeeze 10-20 kt out of 7-9 kilograms of HEU. So, that’s in the neighborhood.

    But reducing mass — and more important diameter — is more about reducing the amount of conventional high explosive (HE) that surrounds the fissile material. (See my discussion on this topic in the context of North Korea.) A physics package of this sort is, by mass, probably 90-95 percent explosives.

    A desire to reduce the amount of explosives would explain the emphasis on advanced electronics in the Sanger and Broad story — less jitter, less explosive:

    Clearly, someone had tried to modernize it, to improve the electronics,” one said. “There were handwritten references to the electronics, and the question is, who was working on this?”

    If the device is, say 60 centimeters instead of 90 cm, than it might weigh as little as 200 kilograms instead of nearly 600.

    You may remember the issue of electronics from James Risen’s State of War — the allegation that the US paid a Russian to give the Iranians a faulty firing set design to retard their program. Same thing, as far as I can tell from the news reports.

    Oh and 60 centimeters isn’t an arbitrary number. More on that is a moment.

    2x the Yield

    Alright, this one I have more trouble with.

    Pakistan’s nuclear tests on May 28 and May 30 had yields of 9-12 kt and 4-6 kt, based on the seismic signals. (The announced yields were 40-45 kt in five devices and 15-18 kt in the sixth device.)

    In other words, I don’t understand how a Pakistani device that was tested can have twice the yield of the 4th Chinese test, because those two events had about the same bang.

    Indeed, Warrick — in contrast to Sanger — implies that the yield is the same:

    The lethality of such a bomb would be little enhanced, but its smaller size might allow for delivery by ballistic missile.

    “To many of these countries, it’s all about size and weight,” Albright said in an interview. “They need to be able to fit the device on the missiles they have.”

    I lean toward thinking the yield of the device is about the same, though I am open to be persuaded otherwise.

    Implications for Iran

    First, let me begin by noting that the Chinese design was deliverable by a missile — it was tested on a DF-2. But that’s just being pedantic — the DF-2 had significantly more throw-weight than the Nodong/Ghuari/Shahab. The 1966 Chinese design, as I have said before, wouldn’t be much good for Iran.

    Some of you may recall the question that David Albright raised about the so-called Laptop of Death — that the RV was designed to accommodate a warhead of only 60 centimeters in diameter:

    Another important question that is sidestepped by the misleading use of warhead in the article is whether Iran can build the relatively small nuclear warhead able to fit into the triconic re-entry vehicle apparent in photos of a 2004 flight test. Based on publicly available photos of the 2004 test launch, the nuclear warhead would require a diameter of about 600 millimeters. Achieving such a diameter would be challenging for Iran. For example, the diameter of the warhead in the design provided to Libya (and perhaps to Iran) by A.Q. Khan was about 900 millimeters. A legitimate question is whether Iran could successfully build such a small nuclear warhead without outside help.

    Obviously, then, the 1998 Pakistani design may be helpful for a state like Iran.

    On the other hand, it isn’t clear to me that simply receiving a design, without any domestic testing experience, is enough to have confidence. As North Korea discovered in trying to jump to a weaponizable device, there are apparently still a few tricks of the trade.

    Still, interesting stuff.

    Comment


    • #3
      Stupid short sighted fear mongering from the article


      However, in recent days top American intelligence officials, who declined to speak about the discovery on the record because the information is classified, said that they had been unable to determine whether Iran or other countries had obtained the weapons design.

      lacking any proof we know throw around allegations. Didn't we learn our lesson in 2003?

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by zraver View Post
        .........
        lacking any proof we know throw around allegations.
        We had strong intelligence indicating that Saddam had WMDs, including communications intercepts, information from friendly Arab governments, the perception of Saddam's own generals, and multiple suspicious activities as shown by Collin Powell in his UN briefing.

        Latter interrogation of Saddam himself indicated that he strived to create the perception of WMD capability, that he indeed had the delivery systems, the knowledge, and had every intention to reconstitute the WMD production (aka, the easy part) as soon as sanctions faltered. Sanctions were faltering.

        Didn't we learn our lesson in 2003?
        You have a six sided die. Five of the sides have a 1, and one of the sides have a 0. The die is about to be thrown and you have a lot of the chips committed . You bet 1, but it comes out a 0. What lesson have you just learned?

        Comment


        • #5
          citanon Reply

          "What lesson have you just learned?"

          A careful man will cover his bet.
          "This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski
          "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool." Lester Bangs

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by citanon View Post
            We had strong intelligence indicating that Saddam had WMDs, including communications intercepts, information from friendly Arab governments, the perception of Saddam's own generals, and multiple suspicious activities as shown by Collin Powell in his UN briefing.

            Latter interrogation of Saddam himself indicated that he strived to create the perception of WMD capability, that he indeed had the delivery systems, the knowledge, and had every intention to reconstitute the WMD production (aka, the easy part) as soon as sanctions faltered. Sanctions were faltering.
            At least some of the strong intelligence should never have been used as it had already been repudiated by other sources. Other intelligence that contra-indicated was ignored.


            Bush claimed intelligence said Iraq had 500 tons of WMD in 30,000 waheads and a fleet of airborne sprayers. None of that was true.

            Bush claimed Saddam was in bed with OBL- not true.

            Bush claimed Saddam trued to by high strength aluminum tubes for use in nuclear research. The IAEA says the tubes were worthless for that role.

            Bush said Iraq was rebuilding its WMD facilities, but 2 months before the war the IAEA found no evidence of this.

            Bush claimed Iraq was trying to get uranium while he knew the documents were forgeries.

            Cheney claimed he had nukes after the IAEA said he didn't.

            days before the war, Bush claimed time was out becuase Saddam would not let the inspectors in. The truth is the inspectors had been there since December.

            4,000 Americans and 75,000 Iraqis are dead now because of that intelligence failure. But I don't think it was a failure, I think it was a lie. You'll have to forgive me if I am not eager to start a 3rd war and the second on the slimmest of rumors.

            Comment


            • #7
              Wake me up when they test.

              When they do, we've got 'em just where we want them and it will no longer be an issue.

              William
              Pharoh was pimp but now he is dead. What are you going to do today?

              Comment


              • #8
                They may not be willing to test.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
                  They may not be willing to test.
                  Sir,
                  I always found it strange that Pakistan,a sunni majority nation would help Iran a shite majority country.
                  The Saudi's would be furious with Pakistan,specially when they provide Pakistan with almost a bilion dollar of oil freebie.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Think it's just the highest bidder. AQ Khan dealt with North Korea also.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
                      They may not be willing to test.
                      Morning, Sir,

                      Some amatuer hour ramblings on the matter:

                      That may turn out to be the case. FWIW, I am a member of the school that holds that is the more dangerous of the possible outcomes for pretty much everybody involved.

                      If it turns out that they cannot be ratcheted down, testing is probably the best way out for all parties concerned.

                      Objectively, the destabilizing factor appears to be the opacity of the whole affair, not the thought that they seek to obtain or may obtain the capability.

                      Testing would remove the agent of instability.

                      Two more possible reasons for the Iranians to test:

                      1. Given the amount of political, capital and industrial inputs the Iranians have allegedly put into the pursuit of fission weapons, the continued legitimacy of the government both at home and abroad could ultimately hinge upon demonstration of the capability.

                      2. If they outsource the design, they are pretty much obliged to test, methinks. The North Koreans drank from the same cup and came up with fizzle, some say. Somehow, I don't think that is what the Iranians have in mind when they have visions of sugar plum fairies and Islamic Bombs.

                      I read the Rumsfeld Comsission's conclusions when they were made public as well as a bunch of other related material and I guess the the real questions are still:

                      1. "How long until they test?"

                      2. "How long after that can their weaponeers conjure up something that can float, swim, slither on its belly through the slime, crawl, walk or fly in air or space?"

                      [SPECULATION MODE ON]

                      Given the idea that a Uranium gun assembly is a low bar and weaponizing such for aerial delivery is a well understood trick, I would think that this is the best hedge from their standpoint.

                      It provides for a credible detterent in an immediate and dangerous neighborhood, does not require testing if that is the way they choose to go, gives them the prestige they need to trump the Saudi Arabians and allows them to be rolled back at Western expense without having to shell out for implosion technology and all that such implies.

                      Seems to me that this is the path of least resistance; all of this advanced warhead stuff might be potentially distracting for both them and us.

                      Miniturization, gains in efficiency and ballistic delivery can all be worked out at a later date.

                      [SPECULATION MODE OFF]

                      I am against proliferation as a general principle but the irony of the Iranian situation is that the disease might be more pleasant than the cure when we consider the broader policy interests at hand.

                      Hope you have a good day.

                      William
                      Pharoh was pimp but now he is dead. What are you going to do today?

                      Comment

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