Jane's Intelligence Review - Proliferation and Procurement

Proliferation and Procurement

*Nuclear fallout - North Korea returns to proliferation programme
A series of North Korean actions between April and June have amounted to a complete breakdown in non-proliferation efforts on the peninsula. Pyongyang's 5 ...
19-Jun-2009

*Punitive power - Combating proliferation with sanctions
The UN Security Council has imposed financial sanctions on three North Korean firms in response to the regime's 5 April rocket launch. The sanctions follow...
14-May-2009

*Agency provocateurs - Atomic organisation faces policy challenges
This year the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will select a new leader. The question of who should succeed Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, who has been...
08-Apr-2009

*Going ballistic - North Korea's advanced missile capabilities
On 24 February, North Korea's Space Committee confirmed it was preparing to launch a rocket, claimed to be the Unha 2, to place the Kwangmyongsong...
12-Mar-2009

*Chemical romance - Syria's unconventional affair develops
Iraq became the 186th country to become a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention on 14 January. This may assuage regional concerns over unconventional weapons,...
12-Feb-2009

*Universal challenge - Non-proliferation efforts face a range of problems
Two of the most important arms control regimes were discussed concurrently in annual meetings in the first week of December 2008: the Chemical Weapons Convention...
15-Jan-2009

*Spores of war - Biosecurity in the US
In September 2001, letters filled with anthrax spores were sent through the United States postal system to members of the media and politicians, resulting in...
10-Oct-2008

*Supply and demand - India seeks nuclear parity
India's goal of having a reliable source of nuclear material and technology is finally nearing completion. On 10 September, United States President George W Bush...
18-Sep-2008

*Safir when ready - Iran sets its sights on long-range capability
Up until now, some countries seeking long-range missile capabilities, such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea, had been stuck on a missile development path using...
18-Sep-2008

*Testing times - Doubts hang over nuclear test ban treaty
The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is designed to prohibit nuclear explosions. It was opened for signature in 1996 and by mid-2008 had been signed...
04-Aug-2008

*Definitely, maybe - Verifying North Korean denuclearisation
On 27 June 2008, North Korea blew up the cooling tower of its plutonium production reactor at Yongbyon. The most public act to date in ...
18-Jul-2008

*Open sesame - Risk from Russia's closed nuclear cities
Russia's nuclear sector has recently gone through dramatic transformations that are hard to rationalise. Only four years ago, the Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom), the ...
17-Jul-2008

*Smoke and mirrors - Analysing the Iranian missile test
On 4 February, Iran rallied significant media attention to witness a successful test launch of its Kavoshgar 1 (Explorer 1) research rocket, termed a scientific...
14-Mar-2008

*Geiger counting - Interpol's hunt for radiological and nuclear threats
A trafficking seizure in Slovakia on 28 November 2007 of what was initially suspected to be highly enriched uranium (HEU), although later determined to be ...
07-Mar-2008

*Nuclear reaction - The intelligence on Iran's nuclear capabilities
On 3 December 2007, the Office of the United States Director of National Intelligence released the declassified summary of its National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) entitled ...
18-Feb-2008

*Political fallout - The threat to Pakistan's nuclear stability
On 28 November, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf stepped down as Pakistan's army chief and handed over control to General Ashfaq Pervez Kiani, former vice chief...
13-Dec-2007

*Weapons of mass analysis - Advances in nuclear forensics
The 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) has suffered from a number of crises of confidence. The clandestine nuclear programmes of North...
18-Oct-2007

*Exploiting Africa - Securing the continent's uranium resources
Africa, and specifically its indigenous uranium, poses a significant challenge to international security. The new realities now in play in the uranium market, namely powerful...
16-Aug-2007

*On the defensive - The future of US ballistic missile defence
On 3 July, Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov suggested that Moscow will consider basing strategic missiles in the oblast of Kaliningrad. The ...
19-Jul-2007

*Nukes in the balance - The effects of proliferation on regional security
Nuclear weapons and the concomitant concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD) are often credited with restraining the Cold War from developing into a World ...
15-Jun-2007

*Chemical reaction - Challenges of the Chemical Weapons Convention
The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) Treaty enjoyed its 10th birthday on 29 April 2007. However, the celebrations were muted. The reason for the circumspect...
17-May-2007

Caucasian networks - Concerns mount over radiological smuggling
At the end of January, Georgian authorities and the CIA undertook a successful sting operation to seize 79.5 g of highly enriched uranium. The ...
17-Apr-2007

Measure of success - Analysing the results of China's ASAT test
In their first full test of an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon system, Chinese scientists and engineers launched a specially modified DF-21 intermediate-range ballistic missile (NATO ...
16-Apr-2007

A dirty business - Nuclear smuggling in former Soviet states
In January this year, the Georgian authorities admitted that in 2006 they had arrested a Russian trying to sell highly enriched uranium during a ...
14-Feb-2007

*US-India nuclear deal: Regional security implications in Asia
A Bill for proposed US-India civilian nuclear co-operation deal was passed by an overwhelming majority in both the US House of Representatives and the ...
19-Dec-2006

*Effective deterrent - Ukraine begins work on new missile system
The new missile programme should be understood as the ability to inflict "unacceptable damage" on an opponent As many as 100 Ukrainian enterprises will...
14-Dec-2006

*Iran strives for self-sufficiency in conventional weapons
Unfamiliarity with counter-intuitive combinations such as the F-14 and the Hawk would in itself be difficult to defend against initially Iran's procurement of technology...
01-Nov-2006

*Northeast Asian missile forces: defence and offence
North Korea's test of a suspected nuclear weapon on 9 October, following its 5 July test launches of seven ballistic missiles, comes at a ...
19-Oct-2006

Assessing Pakistan's nuclear reprocessing capabilities
Recent information published by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) regarding Pakistan's Khushab-II plutonium production reactor raises questions about the country's capability ...
11-Sep-2006

UN conference on tackling small-arms ends in deadlock
The UN Small-Arms Review Conference ended on 7 July, having failed to achieve its stated objectives and without reaching agreement on future international measures to ...
10-Aug-2006

US plans for nuclear weapons modernisation draw criticism
Faced with an outmoded research and production infrastructure, the US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is planning major reforms to reorganise and downsize the ...
14-Jul-2006

*Ukraine's missile capabilities cause proliferation concern
Ukraine's space and missile programmes pose a potential proliferation threat. Although there is no evidence that the country plans to exploit its former missile production ...
16-Jun-2006

*Investigators suspect nuclear smuggling network is still active
Two years after US President George W Bush said intelligence operations against the international nuclear weapon component smuggling network headed by Pakistani scientist Dr Abdul ...
16-Jun-2006

Iranian research indicates pursuit of nuclear enrichment technology
The UN Security Council issued a statement calling on Iran to suspend "all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, to be verified by...
07-Apr-2006

*Unravelling strategies of deception and perception in the Iraq crisis
The history of the events that culminated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq include several decades of successful Iraqi strategic and tactical deception with regards ...
06-Apr-2006

intelligence review