Arms Control Wonk

6 Responses to “NCPC Site & 721 Report”

1. 

   Anya L. | May 13, 2009

   I love this teaser sentence from the Key Suppliers section: “Russian entities had provided assistance to missile and civil nuclear programs in Iran and India.” But then the Russia sub-section totally fails to elaborate on what missile technology the Russian entities are supplying to Iran. It doesn’t even mention the word “missile”. It’s rather obvious what the Russians are supplying to India in terms of missile technology, but no mention of that either… Peculiar.
2. 

   Allen Thomson | May 13, 2009

   Interesting that WINPAC rather than DIA or INR drafted the report. WINPAC’s WMD record hasn’t been all that good lately.
3. 

   PC | May 13, 2009

   I thought that was a bit curious as well Anya—although the assistance section on Iran says:

   “Assistance from entities in China and North Korea, as well as assistance from Russian entities at least in the past, has helped Iran move toward self-sufficiency in the production of ballistic missiles.”

   So I suppose that uncertainty about continuing assistance left nothing missile-related to spell out in the Russia section. But definitely, the Brahmos is not only not a secret, they’re marketing the thing.

   Also interesting: “we judge that Iran currently is focusing on producing more capable MRBMs.” Well, good thing we had been rushing to deploy the GMD in Europe to protect against…oh…

   Hopefully such a focus would be taken into account in the admin’s review of Euro-MD plans.
4. 

   James O'brien | May 14, 2009

   The National Counterproliferation Center actually uses the acronym NCPC rather than NPC…
5. 

   Jeffrey Lewis | May 14, 2009

   NCPC. Corrected. Thx.
6. 

   Anya L. | May 14, 2009

   Not to drone on and on, but another omission was Russia’s impending lease of a nuclear submarine and now pretty much overt assistance to India’s nuclear submarine program… Just saying.