Tag Archives: Russia

‘Fortress America’ needs alternatives to aging nukes

Originally published by The Hill:

U.S. modernization of its nuclear triad of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), missile submarines and bombers armed with safe, reliable and effective nuclear weapons, in numbers sufficient to maintain rough parity with at least the Russian nuclear triad, is imperative to the deterrence of world war and survival of the free world.

  • The triad of land-and sea-based missiles and bombers maximizes survivability, flexibility and credibility of the U.S. nuclear deterrent;
  • U.S. rough numerical parity with Russian strategic nuclear warheads, deliverable to their homeland, is the absolute minimum necessary to deter the world’s most powerful nuclear menace from exploiting Moscow’s big advantages in conventional and tactical nuclear forces with aggression against overseas U.S. interests, allies and the United States itself;
  • Any doubt about the safety, reliability and effectiveness of U.S. nuclear weapons significantly diminishes their deterrence and operational value.

Dr. Keith Payne, president of the National Institute for Public Policy and one of the free world’s foremost nuclear strategists, warns that long neglect of the U.S. triad may invite nuclear aggression by Russia.

“Russia appears to have lowered the threshold for making nuclear threats to include preventing Western actions that seem to have little to do with threats to Russia’s survival,” he says in a Jan. 2 essay. “… Moscow appears to believe that it can employ limited nuclear strikes against U.S. allies, and possibly against the U.S. itself, to prevent a cohesive, powerful Western response to Russia’s use of hard power in support of its expansionist goals.”

Payne’s article notes that, in 2015, NATO’s deputy military commander, Lt. Gen. Sir Adrian Bradshaw, cautioned: “Russia might believe the large-scale conventional force it has shown it can generate on very short notice … could in the future be used not only for intimidation and coercion but potentially to seize NATO territory, after which the threat of escalation might be used to prevent reestablishment of territorial integrity.”

Payne calls for resurrection of the bipartisan consensus on U.S. strategic nuclear forces modernization that made victory possible during the Cold War, recognizing the enormity of this political challenge.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee that drafts the defense budget, personifies the broken bipartisan consensus on nuclear deterrence. Smith recently endorsed the agenda of the extremist anti-nuclear Ploughshares Fund. Smith’s  vision:

  • Eliminate two of three nuclear triad legs — no ICBMs or nuclear-armed bombers — and retain only missile submarines, halving ballistic missile submarine numbers from 12 to six;
  • Abandon strategic nuclear parity with Russia for minimum deterrence, reducing U.S. nuclear weapons from 1,500 to 300, with the goal of eventually eliminating them completely;
  • Adopt a general nuclear “no first use” policy (with exceptions), something the United States rejected throughout the Cold War because it cancels nuclear deterrence of adversary aggression using conventional, chemical and biological weapons; and
  • Constrain presidential “first use” nuclear launch authority by requiring consent from Congress.

John Hopkins, former chief of the Los Alamos nuclear weapons program, and co-author David Sharp, who was chief scientist of the Science, Technology and Engineering Directorate of Los Alamos, in “The Scientific Foundation for Assessing the Nuclear Performance of Weapons in the Stockpile” (Perspectives, Winter 2019), join many nuclear weapons scientists who doubt that U.S. nuclear weapons, now decades old and untested, are still safe, reliable and effective. They assert it’s “not correct” to claim that computer models can verify nuclear weapons will work.

Thus, while modernization of the U.S. nuclear triad is crucial and must be attempted, the United States faces possibly insurmountable problems, unlike Russia, China and North Korea. These include:

  • Deepening U.S. political and cultural divisions, including over the morality and utility of nuclear weapons, may make resurrection of a bipartisan consensus supporting the nuclear triad impossible;
  • Absent such a bipartisan consensus, since modernization and sustainment of the nuclear triad requires decades, and because the White House and Congress inevitably change hands, necessary political support for the triad seems improbable; and
  • Obsolescence of U.S. legacy nuclear weapons, the only ones we have, will inexorably erode the safety, reliability, effectiveness and credibility of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.

Accordingly, if only as an insurance policy against failure to modernize the nuclear triad (at an estimated cost of $700 billion), the White House should immediately launch programs to deploy space-based missile defenses and harden U.S. critical infrastructures against electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and cyber attacks.

Space-based defenses such as Brilliant Pebbles could render adversary nuclear missiles obsolete, at an estimated cost of $10 billion to $20 billion, and could be deployed before the end of President Trump’s second term, if he is re-elected. EMP hardening would mitigate worst-case cyber and other threats to the electric grid (at a projected cost of $2 billion to $4 billion) and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures (costing $10 billion to $20 billion) — using private money, at no cost to government. On a crash basis, much could be accomplished in six months.

Together, these active and passive defenses could be a revolution in military technology, shifting strategic advantage away from nuclear aggressors to the United States. Perhaps a new bipartisan consensus can be built around strategic defenses, with the long-term Reagan-Obama goal of “a world without nuclear weapons.”

At minimum, absent a credible nuclear triad, we will need a “Fortress America.”

Dr. Peter Vincent Pry was chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission. He served on the staff of the House Armed Services Committee and at the CIA. He is the author of a new book, “EMP Manhattan Project: Organizing For Survival Against An Electromagnetic Pulse Catastrophe.”

The Eroding Nuclear Deterrent

The Pentagon’s new Missile Defense Review has some good news, but re-states a commitment to nuclear deterrence – not missile defense – to thwart China and Russia.

The report acknowledges changes to the threat environment and aims to upgrade U.S. missile defense capabilities to protect against threats from rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. The review suggests greater cooperation with allies, deployment of more THADD, Patriot and Aegis systems, increasing receptors in Alaska, and improvements in the early warning systems.

However, none of the these upgrades are designed to counter ICBMs from Russia and China. Indeed, the current missile defense technology is not capable of intercepting the advanced weapons Russia and China have. For this reason, since U.S. policy to defend against Russian and Chinese ICBMs remains traditional nuclear deterrence – mutual assured destruction (MAD), the U.S. nuclear arsenal and infrastructure must be modernized to remain effective.

Nuclear deterrence depends on U.S. technological parity with – and ideally, superiority over, – Russia and China. “The U.S. nuclear deterrent has become seriously eroded,” Dr. Mark Schneider stated in a December 2017 Center for Security Policy report. “America’s nuclear forces are very old and will get significantly older before they are replaced.”

It may surprise many Americans that the last comprehensive nuclear modernization of the nuclear deterrent began 37 years ago, at the beginning of the Reagan administration. When this last big upgrade took place, today’s lieutenant colonels were toddlers.

Peter Huessy, President of Geostrategic Analysis, explains, “America’s nuclear force is aging: U.S. land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles are now 47 years old, the B-52 strategic bomber is approaching 50 years, and the submarines are approaching 40 years – the longest any U.S. submarine has even been at sea.” Most of our B-52 bombers and most of our Ohio– or Trident-class ballistic missile submarines are older than their commanding officers.

“The estimated life span of a pit [the fissile material component of a nuclear weapon] is 45 to 60 years. The current average age of America’s nuclear weapons is 35 years. This means that in as little as 10 years we could see a collapse of the U.S. nuclear deterrent” Schneider said.

Not only are U.S. weapons rapidly aging, but the ability to produce new warheads is compromised since the majority of people with that specific, highly-specialized design and testing experience have retired.

“Leaps in technology also mean that the process of safely resuming nuclear weapons test would have to be reinvented as opposed to replicated” Michaela Dodge wrote in a 2018 Heritage Foundation report.

“Due to decades of neglect, the U.S. is the only nuclear weapon state without a fully functional nuclear weapons production complex,” Schneider said, “The U.S. lacks the ability to produce tritium, a vital nuclear weapons ingredient.”

Furthermore, while the U.S. nuclear arsenal has eroded, Russia and China, who both see America as their main adversary, have modernized and expanded their nuclear triads.

“Russia has achieved many significant advantages over the aged U.S. nuclear deterrent, including at least 10-to-1 superiority in tactical nuclear weapons, a largely modernized force of long-range strategic nuclear missiles, submarines, and bombers; and perhaps most significantly, a new generation of advanced nuclear warheads that have no U.S. equivalents,” Dr. Peter Pry, executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security recently wrote.

A recent report from the Defense Intelligence Agency states that China is “on the verge of fielding some of the most modern weapons systems in the world.” Moreover, China has likely surpassed America in hypersonic weaponry and is a leader in precision-strike capabilities, according to the assessment.

If America continues to rely on a nuclear deterrence strategy, as the latest Missile Defense Review states, it is imperative that the U.S. nuclear arsenal and infrastructure are modernized to effectively fulfill that role.

Is a Russia-China alliance emerging? Not necessarily.

Warming relations between Moscow and Beijing could end up weakening Russia beyond recovery. The massive Vostok 2018 joint military exercises between both powers is certainly cause for concern – but it could be masking Russia’s hastening decline.

Plans to divert Siberian rivers to supply fresh water to China are forcing locals to suffer for the Putin regime’s corrupt deals with Beijing. Even more dangerous for Russia is the increasing Chinese colonization of Siberia and the Russian Far East.

“’The strengths’ of the two countries are so unequal – China’s population and its economy are an order of magnitude larger than Russia’s – that either Russia will be swallowed up or the alliance between the two will break down,” Paul Goble writes, citing Russian sociologist and Deutsche Welle commentator Igor Eidman.

“The result of such an arrangement between neighbors could only be the gradual colonization of the weak by the strong,” says Eidman, “Which is already taking place in [Russia’s] Far East.”

The United States can play this opportunity to its strategic advantage if it can calm down about all things Russian.

Diverting Russian rivers into China

Beijing’s plans to divert parts of Russian rivers into China could be politically disastrous, threatening the environment “and even the survival of the peoples living along any such shift in the flow of river waters,” Paul Goble observes in another article, citing Sibreal journalist Kseniya Smolyakova. Local populations in Siberia are increasing their resistance to the massive Chinese network of canals from Russia through Kazakhstan and Mongolia to divert water into China.

The Altai river diversion is a mortal threat might resonate well in Moscow, but not among the ethnic Russian villages and growing Central Asian communities of Siberia. According to Goble, “Moscow may be willing to make a deal,” but the locals are not, “and this anger could help power regional protests just as it did 50 years ago.”

“Now, with China taking the issue of price off the table – Beijing can and would fund it if Russia agrees to the project – many in the Putin regime in Moscow are ready to go forward full steam ahead. But both a half century ago and now, the people who would be most directly affected are opposed – and angry at Moscow as well as at China,” Goble writes.

Chinese colonization in Russia

“Chinese firms are now prepared to play one federal subject off against the other, something they can do because the Chinese have money to invest and the Russians desperately need that,” says Goble. 

Russia’s Rex news agency reports that soon “the first Chinese enclave may appear in Russia” because huge amounts of Chinese investments, as in the Chuvashia region, will give China political power in Russia’s interior.

In the Buryatia and Trans Baikal regions of east Siberia, many fear an increased Chinese pressure, Goble reports.

“Rosbalt commentator Dmitry Remizov says that some see this Putin move as intended to hand them over to the Chinese, something many in the republic and region are very much against given the overbearing attitude of Chinese businessmen and officials already,” he says.

The bottom line

China’s colonization of Russia will proceed for decades as Russia’s population and economy continue to decline. The bottom line here is, how can the US take the strategic advantage of the inherent contradictions in any Russia-China “alliance”? Do we have the strategic outlook to make the most of it?

Russia used US aid to fund new submarines armed with latest nuclear missiles

Russia is deploying its latest long-range precision strike missiles aboard its newest attack submarine and strategic ballistic missile submarine, Bill Gertz reports. US aid to Russia during the Clinton years enabled Russia to build those submarines, whose newest missiles threaten us today.

“Russia is deploying long-range, precision cruise missiles to the western Atlantic that American defense officials say will allow Moscow to target Washington and other East Coast cities with conventional or nuclear attacks,” Gertz reported January 4 in the Free Beacon.

“Moscow is adding Kalibr land attack cruise missiles to both warships and missile submarines that Moscow plans to use in Atlantic patrols near the United States, sorties that were once routine during the Cold War,” according to Gertz.

This didn’t have to happen. Russia was so impoverished when the next-generation submarines were constructed in the 1990s that Moscow could not have built them without substantial foreign support.

The US, under President Bill Clinton and with bipartisan majorities in Congress, provided that aid directly under an idealistic but strategically foolhardy disarmament program, and indirectly through its backing of billions of dollars in International Monetary Fund loans to the Russian Central Bank.

Worst of all, policymakers were informed of what they were doing, but chose to look the other way.

Today’s Russian missile platforms were built with US aid 20 years ago

The Russian doomsday submarines deploying the Kalibr missile in 2019 were built thanks to misguided United States aid programs from the 1990s. The purpose of the aid, under the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, was to help Moscow safely scrap its obsolete Soviet-era nuclear weapons and delivery systems, including missiles and submarines.

We warned at the time that Moscow would abuse the aid to free up funds to modernize its nuclear weapons triad. Russia could not modernize its forces while remaining within arms control treaty restrictions, unless it dismantled its old weapons first.

The CTR aid, also known as “Nunn-Lugar” aid after senators Sam Nunnn (D-GA) and Dick Lugar (R-IN), also freed up Russia from having to spend its own scarce funds to dismantle the old at a time when it was short of cash to build the new.

The specific class of submarines are the Severodvinsk- or Yasen-class attack sub, and the fourth-generation Borei-class strategic ballistic missile sub (SSBN).

Under construction since 1993, the Yasen-class sub, whose NATO designation is Severodvinsk, stalled repeatedly until the first was commissioned in 2014. The sub is armed with long-range cruise missiles, armed with conventional or nuclear warheads.

The Borei-class submarine had greater priority, replacing Soviet-era Delta 2 and 3 SSBNs and the Typhoon-class sub. It is armed with strategic nuclear missiles and can also be outfitted with long-range cruise missiles with nuclear warheads.

Russia’s nuclear submarine production was crippled for years by funding problems and official corruption. Moscow could not build its new fleet of next-generation submarines without dismantling the old subs, in order for it to comply with its arms-control treaty obligations.

International Monetary Fund cash funded Russian submarine construction

We reported in January, 1998 how the IMF, to which the United States the largest single financial backer, was instrumental to funding the startup construction of both the Borei- and Severodvinsk-class submarines:

“No sooner did the IMF agree earlier this month to release its latest tranche of $667.5 million to Moscow than the Finance Ministry, which lobbied hard for the release, announced the money would be poured into military industry. Citing First Deputy Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported January 9 that most of the cash ‘will be spent mainly on settling government debt . . . for orders placed with the defense industry.’

“This runs against U.S. interests for four reasons. The IMF loan props up companies owned or controlled by the state. Second, the loan subsidizes a virulently anti-Western political constituency. Third, the money fuels the very sector most responsible for weapons proliferation to rogue regimes. And fourth, the IMF loan is financing the modernization of Russia’s submarines and weapons of mass destruction.”

We described how IMF cash payments into Russia’s central bank went directly to funding the construction of the first Borei-class ballistic missile submarine. We could even track when the IMF funds were scheduled to be transferred, and how a delay affected the keel-laying of the sub, named Yuri Dolgoruki, after the Ukrainian-born founder of Moscow. Here’s what we said:

“With these priorities, what kind of military industry orders might the IMF — and by extension, the American taxpayer — be funding?

“It might be paying for one of First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais’s pet projects: the Yuri Dolgoruki. Chubais doesn’t mention the military when asks Washington for more money for economic reform, but the Yuri Dolgoruki is the first in a series of Russia’s fourth-generation nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines.

“In October 1996, Chubais hailed the Yuri Dolgoruki as “a submarine for the next century.” To spur the stalled project along, he announced that he had arranged for the Finance Ministry to free up funds in time for the official keel-laying ceremony at Shipyard No. 402 of the Russian State Center for Nuclear Shipbuilding in Severodvinsk. But the same day, the IMF announced it was postponing its monthly tranches of the $10.2 billion loan, citing Moscow’s inadequate economic policies. The keel-laying ceremony was hastily postponed, supposedly due to inclement weather.

“Finally, on February 7, 1997, the IMF released the money. That very day, the Finance Ministry announced that it had come up with cash to pay the Russian State Center for Nuclear Shipbuilding, averting a strike. Construction of the Yuri Dolgoruki continued. Once in service, the main targets of the submarine’s nuclear missile complement will be American cities. (In the same port, the new Severodvinsk-class of attack submarines has also begun production. Its advanced features are forcing the U.S. Navy to revise its defensive strategy.)

“Perhaps the IMF loan will pay to perfect the SS-NX-28, the next-generation submarine-launched ballistic missile with a range of nearly 5000 miles. The missile will be deployed aboard the Yuri Dolgoruki. The SS-NX-28 underwent its most recent trial last November at a test range near Arkhangelsk, but malfunctions require more testing, and therefore, more money.”

Congress was informed in 1997

After news and analytical coverage in 1995 and 1996, Congress was informed in 1997 of how US aid was helping Russia overcome its financial hardships and continue modernizing its strategic nuclear arsenal. We testified before a House national security panel,

“As it has in most sectors of society, economic hardship has taken its toll on Russia’s strategic modernization program. Nevertheless, with its increased reliance on weapons of mass destruction, Moscow is investing what it can in these expensive programs. They include: the new Topol-M ICBM, the refitting of all Typhoon submarines to launch an upgraded submarine-launched ballistic missile, construction of the first of the Boreas [Borei]-class of ballistic missile submarines to succeed the Typhoon, development of a new air-launched cruise missile, a new multi-role strategic bomber, new generations of nuclear warheads, including miniaturized warheads; new generations of chemical weapons, including the ‘Novichok‘ class of binary nerve agents; and an active biological weapons program.

“In my own research, apart from the chemical and biological weapons programs, I have found the Russian government, the Ministry of Atomic Energy, the Strategic Rocket Forces, and the Military Space Forces to be far more forthcoming about their missile and nuclear warhead modernization initiatives than has the United States government and our own armed forces. Russian authorities even take the trouble to announce their developments, translate them into English, and place them on the Internet for the world to see.

“. . . Significantly, when Mr. Cohen’s predecessor, [Defense Secretary] William Perry, visited Severodvinsk last October to view the dismantling of an obsolete Yankee-class submarine with U.S. aid, he was silent about the new attack submarine and ballistic missile submarine being built in the very same port.“

More than 21 years later, as Bill Gertz reports, that very same Severodvinsk-class submarine is being outfitted with even more modern Kalibr long-range precision cruise missiles that will allow Putin to attack American cities faster and more accurately.

US Inviting War by Ignoring Russia’s Inevitable Nuclear Superiority

Originally published by Newsmax:

The U.S. nuclear deterrent preserved peace during the Cold War by maintaining numerical and technological rough parity with the USSR, not allowing Moscow to gain any significant advantage that might tempt Russia to launch World War III.

Today, Russia has achieved many significant advantages over the aged U.S. nuclear deterrent, including an at least 10-to-1 superiority in tactical nuclear weapons; a largely modernized force of long-range strategic nuclear missiles, submarines, and bombers; and perhaps most significantly a new generation of advanced technology nuclear warheads that have no U.S. equivalents.

Consequently, Washington faces a wide range of scenarios which U.S. nuclear forces are not designed to deter or defeat with equivalent and proportional response. Possible tomorrows:

—U.S. fighters and bombers are swept from the skies by Russian fighters firing long-range air-to-air missiles armed with mini-nuclear warheads.

—U.S. carriers, submarines, and other ships are sunk by nuclear-armed torpedoes, cruise and ballistic missiles, giving Russia mastery of the seas.

—The Russian Army blasts its way across European NATO using tanks, artillery, and aircraft armed with mini-neutron warheads that produce virtually no radioactive fallout.

—U.S. nuclear missiles retaliating against Russia are intercepted and destroyed by anti-ballistic missiles armed with nuclear X-ray warheads that are far more effective than the non-nuclear kinetic-kill weapons employed by the U.S. National Missile Defense.

—A Super-EMP warhead delivered by a Russian, Chinese, or North Korean missile or satellite blacks-out the North American electric grid, paralyzing the U.S. economy and military, including nuclear forces.

Today, the U.S. has no nuclear-armed air-to-air missiles; no nuclear-armed torpedoes or tactical anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles; no mini-neutron warheads, X-ray warheads, or Super-EMP warheads. Nor are there any U.S. plans to develop advanced nuclear warheads.

Instead, the Pentagon plans to spend an estimated $700 billion over the next decade modernizing strategic nuclear delivery systems, so the U.S. will have new missiles and bombers, upgrading command and control, and refurbishing the nuclear scientific and industrial base that maintains old-fashioned legacy nuclear weapons from the Cold War.

But no advanced technology, new generation nuclear warheads, will be designed or built.

The tip of the spear for the U.S. nuclear deterrent will continue to be Cold War era nuclear weapons, designed for high-yield blast and shock, not specialized nuclear effects. These may be as irrelevant to modern nuclear deterrence and war-fighting as the crossbow.

The Pentagon does plan to de-mothball an old-design nuclear weapon having low-yield, to deter Russian use of low-yield tactical nuclear weapons. But it is not a new generation warhead for specialized nuclear effects.

Worst — the decades-old legacy nuclear warheads that will continue to be used for the present and future U.S. nuclear deterrent may not even work.

John C. Hopkins and David H. Sharp in “The Scientific Foundation For Assessing The Nuclear Performance Of Weapons In The Stockpile Is Eroding” (Perspectives Winter 2019) are the latest in a long chorus of nuclear weapon scientists warning the safety, reliability, and effectiveness of America’s geriatric nuclear warheads is increasingly doubtful.

How did we get here? Why not arm our expensive new missiles and bombers with new advanced generation nuclear warheads?

23 years ago, the late great Congressman Floyd Spence, then Chairman of the House National Security Committee, warned the U.S. was moving toward unilateral nuclear disarmament through technological obsolescence in his report “The Clinton Administration and Nuclear Stockpile Stewardship: Erosion By Design” (HNSC October 30, 1996).

Chairman Spence warned the Clinton Administration’s strong anti-nuclear bias and ideological commitment to nuclear disarmament was behind:

—U.S. compliance with the unratified Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty despite Russian cheating;

—Replacing nuclear testing with controversial “science-based nuclear stockpile stewardship” that relies instead on computer models;

—The Spratt-Furse Amendment outlawing research on advanced new generation nuclear weapons;

—Replacing the U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency, that focused on nuclear weapons for deterrence and war-fighting, with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, more about arms control of nuclear, chemical, biological and other weapons, and natural threats, like climate change.

Unfortunately, President George W. Bush, preoccupied with the war on terrorism, did little or nothing to reverse U.S. nuclear obsolescence. Matters worsened under President Obama.

Now in 2019, the nuclear weapon scientists who helped win the Cold War are mostly retired or dead, as are Pentagon strategists who gave highest priority to nuclear deterrence.

Rep. Adam Smith, the new Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, in a recent interview opposes modernizing U.S. nuclear forces, would constrain President Trump’s launch authority, constrain military planning to a “No First Use” policy, and drastically cut the number of U.S. nuclear weapons with the goal of their elimination.

Given the political and cultural opposition to nuclear weapons, it may be impossible for the U.S. to achieve their modernization. Russian nuclear superiority, and soon China’s, appears inevitable and permanent.

Accordingly, the U.S. Space Force, space-based missile defenses, and hardening U.S. critical infrastructures against EMP and cyber-attacks may be more realistic goals. Such a revolution in military technology — that renders nuclear missiles obsolete and makes strategic defenses dominant — may be only way for the U.S. to win the New Cold War.

Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. He served on the Congressional EMP Commission as chief of staff, the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the CIA. He is author of “Blackout Wars.” For more of his reports, Go Here Now.

Vote to Fix a Broken Intelligence Community

Originally Published on Newsmax:

If Democrats win control of the House or Senate in the November 6 elections, they will capture the chairmanships of one or both of the intelligence committees — the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).

Consequently, reforming the FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, and other parts of an Intelligence Community deeply corrupted by the Obama Administration will become much more difficult or impossible.

The Obama Administration was notorious for producing politically biased intelligence designed to advance their domestic and foreign policy agendas, regardless of the consequences for U.S. national security.

The grave danger of politically-driven intelligence should have become obvious to all in the summer of 2017 when North Korea demonstrated ICBMs capable of striking anywhere in the United States and tested an H-Bomb. This less than one year after President Obama and his Intelligence Community reassured Congress and the American people that North Korea was many years away from developing both threats.

Many are disappointed that the Trump Administration, HPSCI and SSCI, having inherited Obama’s highly politicized Intelligence Community, have apparently done little or nothing to reform its analytical ranks by recruiting new senior analysts.

Nearly two years after President Trump’s election — among the senior analytical ranks — it is still the Obama Administration’s Intelligence Community.

If people are policy, so too with intelligence.

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 — that mandated reforms recommended by the 9/11 Commission to avoid another massively destructive intelligence failure — requires the Intelligence Community to foster alternative views, including by B-Teams.

B-Teams comprise independent experts with access to classified data to provide alternative intelligence assessments.

B-Teams would be an excellent check on Intelligence Community bias. B-team analysis begun by President Gerald Ford as a corrective to CIA underestimating the Soviet threat helped President Reagan win the Cold War.

At minimum, the Trump Administration, HPSCI and SSCI, should be proliferating B-Teams to challenge dubious, deeply erroneous and in some cases preposterous intelligence assessments such as these:

Allegedly Russia “hacked” the 2016 elections to help Trump. Astonishing that President Trump’s own hand-picked leaders of the Intelligence Community have allowed to stand unchallenged this obviously politicized assessment by the Obama Administration’s Director of National Intelligence, General Clapper, and CIA Director Brennan — both Trump haters. Many former intelligence officers have already debunked this disinformation designed to undermine President Trump’s legitimacy. Why is Clapper-Brennan propaganda tolerated by the Trump Administration to continue as a legitimate official intelligence assessment?

Allegedly climate change is the greatest threat to U.S. and global security. President Trump has not allowed this fantasy to damage our economy and lead the U.S. toward global socialism by wisely ending the “war on coal” and withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords. But Intelligence Community assessments continue to parrot Obama on climate change, serving as a rationale for misguided policies at the EPA, DOE, DOD, DHS, and throughout the U.S. government. Contrary to climate change true believers, there is no scientific consensus that climate change is “anthropogenic” (caused by Man) or a clear and present danger.

Allegedly Russia has reduced its tactical nuclear weapons from 20,000 to 1,000. The Obama Administration’s Intelligence Community concealed Russia’s violations of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty and low-balled Russian cheating on tactical nuclear weapons to sell Congress the New START Treaty and advance a “world without nuclear weapons” led by U.S. unilateral nuclear disarmament. DIA and CIA continue shrinking Russia’s tactical nuclear arsenal through wishful thinking in President Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review.

Allegedly electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a low-risk low-priority threat. The Obama Administration’s deeply erroneous Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee (JAEIC) report on EMP continues to misguide policy at DHS, even though thoroughly discredited by the Congressional EMP Commission.

Allegedly Iran does not have nuclear weapons. A recent Institute for Science and International Security report, by two former UN nuclear inspectors, reviewing material stolen by Israel from Iran’s secret nuclear archives concludes:

“The United States incorrectly assessed with high confidence in a 2007 declassified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that ‘in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.’ Based on the information in the archives, Iran’s nuclear weapons program continued after 2003 …Moreover, the 2007 NIE also incorrectly asserted that Iran had not re-started its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, albeit with only moderate confidence. It should be noted that the term ‘moderate confidence’ demonstrates the limitations of intelligence information. However, there is no evidence that the program was ever fully halted, even up to today.”

Israeli intelligence officers and some U.S. former senior intelligence officials — including a former CIA Director, a former Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, and a former White House Science Advisor — have warned Iran probably already has nuclear weapons. (See “Underestimating Nuclear Missile Threats from North Korea and Iran” National Review, February 2016 by Ambassador James R. Woolsey, Ambassador Henry Cooper, Dr. William Graham, Fritz Ermarth, and Dr. Peter Vincent Pry.)

These are just a few of the dubious, deeply erroneous, and in some cases preposterous intelligence assessments produced by the Obama Administration’s Intelligence Community that deserve B-Team treatment.

Expect these and other far-left fantasies that are “the world according to Obama” to continue undermining U.S. national security if Democrats capture control of the Senate or House intelligence committees as a result of the November 6 elections.

Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. He served on the Congressional EMP Commission as chief of staff, the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the CIA. He is author of “Blackout Wars.” For more of his reports, Go Here Now.

Will Americans Vote for Congressional Gridlock or US National Security?

Originally published on Newsmax.com:

Days before U.S. congressional elections crucial to Trump Administration plans for protecting the U.S. and deterring World War III, Moscow’s new “peace offensive” is trying to mobilize the kind of American voter Vladimir Lenin allegedly once described as “useful idiots.”

Will Americans vote for congressional gridlock or for U.S. national security?

At stake are Trump Administration programs strengthening U.S. military might and homeland security, all long-neglected or opposed by the Obama Administration and congressional Democrats:

— Rebuilding the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines.

— Modernizing U.S. nuclear deterrent forces and their scientific-industrial base.

— Protecting the U.S. electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures from cyber and EMP attack.

— Creating a U.S. Space Force and space-based defenses that could render nuclear missiles obsolete.

But wait! Are these programs really necessary?

Just last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin promised: “We have no concept of a preemptive strike.”

“We expect to be struck by nuclear weapons, but we will not use them [first],” Putin said, “The aggressor will have to understand that retaliation is inevitable, that it will be destroyed, and that we, as victims of aggression, as martyrs, will go to heaven.” Whereas Americans “will simply die because they won’t even have time to repent.”

On October 18, according to TASS: “Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov believes that Moscow and Washington should reaffirm the idea it will be impossible to win a nuclear war.”

Lavrov: “The Americans and we have made two fundamental statements since the Soviet era to the effect nobody can win a nuclear war and for that reason it cannot happen. It might be a good idea to reaffirm this postulate.”

Lavrov criticizes U.S. nuclear deterrent modernization, including the development of a U.S. low-yield warhead to counter Russia’s 10-to-1 advantage in tactical nuclear weapons, as dangerously destabilizing and threatening to “undermine all existing agreements.”

Yet Moscow expects Washington to be OK with Russia’s violations of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, too long tolerated by the Obama Administration, but now challenged by President Trump.

Threatens Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov on October 21, U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty, which now constrains only the United States and NATO, not Russia or China, would be “very dangerous.”

Who would believe such propaganda, be cowed by such threats?

Too many Americans.

Too many Americans belong to the party of “blame America first” and to the party of suicidal appeasement and to the party that fantasizes about former President Obama’s “world without nuclear weapons” beginning with U.S. unilateral disarmament.

For example, according to national security expert Peter Huessy (October 15): “The Princeton University disarmament group, Global Zero, has released a new…report — The End of Nuclear Warfighting — that calls for the unilateral disarmament of more than two-thirds of the U.S. nuclear deterrent and…placing most U.S. warheads in storage bunkers.”

Moscow wants Americans to temporarily forget, until after voting on November 6, dictator Putin’s March 1 televised briefing to the world describing new nuclear super-weapons giving Russia “nuclear superiority” and demanding that the U.S. “listen to us now.”

Moscow hopes voting Americans never read former Director of the U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency, Vice Admiral Robert Monroe’s recent article accurately describing Russia’s hyper-aggressive nuclear strategy in The Hill:

Russia makes “no distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons. They consider the full spectrum of weaponry to be available for military use; and they have even gone farther, by establishing a preferred strategy of early (conflict-ending) use of low-yield nukes in all military actions, large and small. For a quarter-century Russia has been focusing their nuclear weapons research and testing on very low yields (say, from ten to 500 tons). During this same period, they have also been researching and testing greater use of fusion, less of fission, possibly achieving pure fusion. These weapons would emit only neutrons and gamma rays, and leave little or no contaminating residual radiation.”

“Their tactics of use would be ones we’ve never seen or thought about. Putin has threatened military action in many areas of Europe, to recover the former Soviet empire. If armed conflict broke out tomorrow, the advancing Russian armor, mobilized infantry, artillery, and tactical aircraft would be preceded by dozens of low-yield nuclear detonations, killing everything, but leaving roads and bridges intact. The war would be over in days or hours.”

Moscow doesn’t want American voters to read the Congressional EMP Commission Chairman’s Report, recently approved for unclassified publication by the Defense Department:

Russian military doctrine “describes the combined use of cyber viruses and hacking, physical attacks, non-nuclear EMP weapons, and ultimately nuclear EMP attack against electric grids and critical infrastructures as a new way of warfare that is the greatest Revolution in Military Affairs in history. Like Nazi Germany’s Blitzkrieg (‘Lightning War’) Strategy that coordinated airpower, armor, and mobile infantry to achieve strategic and technological surprise that nearly defeated the Allies in World War II, the New Blitzkrieg is, literally and figuratively, an electronic ‘Lightning War’ so potentially decisive in its effects that an entire civilization could be overthrown in hours.”

Vote November 6. And don’t be an idiot.