Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control

Testimony: Weak U.S. Export Controls Contribute to Iraqi WMD Efforts

September 21, 1990April 4, 2017 By Gary Milhollin

Testimony of Gary Milhollin

Director, Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control

Before the House Committee on Government Operations
Subcommittee on Commerce, Consumer, and Monetary Affairs

September 21, 1990

I am pleased to have this opportunity to address the Subcommittee on Commerce, Consumer and Monetary Affairs on the subject of United States export controls.

I am a member of the University of Wisconsin Law School faculty and director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control in Washington, D.C., a project devoted to slowing the spread of nuclear weapons to developing countries.

I would like to begin by saying that our present conflict with Iraq is unprecedented in the following sense: it is the first time that U.S. forces have been used to confront the effects of arms proliferation in a developing country. Iraq’s great potential for building weapons of mass destruction is one of the reasons why U.S. troops are now poised for war in the Gulf. If war comes, and Western “guests” still shield Iraq’s arms factories, the West will be forced to bomb its own citizens to destroy its own exports. An attack on these installations will also guarantee a bloody, full-scale land war and even more U.S. casualties–many from Iraqi chemical weapons.

I believe that the West has fallen into this situation because of ineffective export control policies. Although other countries have contributed more to Iraq’s war machine than the United States, our exports have clearly been imprudent. I would like to discuss three cases which show how the inadequacy of U.S. export controls have contributed to the problem the United States now faces in Iraq.

Recent cases

Rocket Casings for Brazil

Last week seven large rocket motor casings were shipped out of Chicago to Brazil. The casings were heat-treated by a Chicago firm so that they could withstand the stress of the first launch of Brazil’s largest rocket, the VLS.

The VLS will enable Brazil for the first time to launch a satellite and to build a strategic missile. As a missile the VLS will have a range of over 2000 miles with a payload of 500 kilograms, the presumed weight of a first-generation nuclear missile warhead.

The VLS is being tested by CTA, the research arm of the Brazilian Air Force. The man most responsible for developing the VLS is General Hugo Piva, the former head of CTA, who is now in charge of a Brazilian rocket technology team in Iraq. The team, composed of former employees of CTA and other Brazilian companies, is helping Iraq improve the performance of the SCUD missiles now aimed at U.S. troops–missiles that probably carry chemical warheads.

The team is also helping Iraq develop its new Al-Abid space launcher, first tested last December. Brazil’s VLS and Iraq’s Al-Abid share the distinction of using exactly the same configuration of rocket motors–five motors grouped together in a first stage, with two more single rocket motors stacked on each other as the second and third stages. If the Al-Abid works, it will give Iraq the ability to launch spy satellites and move Iraq closer to having a strategic long-range missile.

It is absolutely clear that the Brazilians will pass on whatever they learn about rocketry to Iraq. Brazil has converted every one of its space rockets into a missile for export, and Iraq has been a preferred customer. The U.S. heat treatment of the VLS casings will directly contribute to strategic missile proliferation in both Brazil and Iraq.

The heat-treatment of such an item is a service contained on the U.S. Munitions List. Therefore it requires an export license from the State Department. It is now clear that State granted the license in error. Since Brazil is a notorious proliferation risk–it rejects the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has secret missile and nuclear weapon development programs–it is difficult to imagine how any part of the U.S. government could intelligently agree to assist Brazil in such a venture. The fact that State did agree shows that something is seriously wrong with the export review process.

Why did State agree? Last Friday, before the Joint Economic Committee, State said that the heat treatment was “consistent with U.S. policy” and was “not controlled.” It is, of course, controlled by the munitions list or Brazil would not have needed an export license. State Department licensing seems to be a sort of low-level labelling, in which someone who doesn’t know anything about missiles compares applications to a checklist. This is done in a special atmosphere, created by people who want to maintain good relations with Brazil, just as they wanted to maintain good relations with Iraq until the invasion of Kuwait.
As soon as the case got to the Pentagon–to people who knew something about missiles–the license was suspended.

After the mistake was discovered, the State Department overrode the Pentagon’s objections and pushed the export through. Instead, State should have admitted its mistake, apologized to Brazil, and offered compensation for the casings, which had already been heat treated.

By sending the casings out, State undermined U.S. credibility as a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). Missile casings are on the MTCR’s list of items which the members are not supposed to export. We put great pressure on France to prevent the sale of French rocket motors to Brazil, although France said they would be used only to build a space launcher. The United States argued that there was no difference between a big space launcher and a big missile, and that the French sale would undermine the MTCR. We must now admit that there is also no difference between a big rocket casing and a big missile casing, and that our heat treatment of Brazil’s missile casings also undermined the MTCR.

Nuclear Furnaces for Iraq:

On July 19th, the White House blocked the sale of a “skull” furnace to Iraq by the Consarc Corporation of New Jersey. This high-performance furnace can melt titanium for missile nose cones and other critical missile parts and might be able to melt plutonium and uranium for nuclear bomb cores. The skull furnace was to be accompanied by three other furnaces: an electron beam furnace from Consarc, and furnaces for vacuum induction and heat treatment from Consarc’s British subsidiary.

Used together, the four furnaces would have formed a powerful production line, far exceeding Iraq’s needs for its stated end use of manufacturing artificial limbs for victims of the Gulf War. According to U.S. officials, Iraq would have had a “Cadillac” production line for atomic bomb and ballistic missile parts, even better than the facilities at American nuclear weapons labs. The White House intervened at the last minute, after the furnaces were crated and ready for shipment.

The White House had to take this drastic step because U.S. export law changed on July 1, 1990. On that date Cocom (the Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls, composed of Japan, Australia, and all NATO countries except Iceland) dropped export controls on thirty categories of equipment, almost all of which can be used to make nuclear weapons or long-range missiles. Skull furnaces were among the items decontrolled by both Cocom and the United States.

The furnaces were stopped through good fortune. The manufacturer, Consarc, notified the Commerce Department in 1989 of its intention to sell Iraq a high-performance furnace that could aid a nuclear program. The Commerce Department told Consarc–mistakenly, it appears–that there was no need to apply for an export license. In June, just before the furnaces were to be shipped, the State Department contacted the Customs Service, which put a twenty-day hold on the shipment. In July, before the hold expired, the Commerce Department gave Consarc a letter requiring Consarc to get an export license.

Because the furnaces were dropped from the U.S. Commodity Control List on July 1, the only remaining ground for requiring an export license is Section 778.3 of the Export Administration Regulations. This section obliges the exporter to get a license if he “knows or has reason to know” that the commodity “will” be used in “fabricating … nuclear weapons.” Thus to block the shipment the U.S. government had to declare that Iraq was going to use the furnace to make atomic bombs.

The declaration was an affront to Iraq, which claimed that the furnace had only civilian applications. Making this affront was the price that the White House chose to pay in order to stop the export. If Pakistan or Israel tries to buy the same furnace next month, the diplomatic price will be higher. Both of these countries have strong ties to the United States. Making last-minute nuclear accusations is not the best way to handle export cases.

Nor is it an adequate way to handle them. The U.S. government only knew about the furnaces through Consarc’s earlier application for an export license. If Iraq should order another skull furnace next week from someone else, no license requirement will apply. The furnace is no longer on the export control list. Without a license application, the government will not know about the order, and will not be able to block it by giving the exporter a letter notifying him of Iraq’s nuclear intentions, the procedure required under Section 778.3.

Pakistan, India, South Africa, or any other country trying to make nuclear weapons and missiles can also buy the furnaces directly from Consarc, without applying for a license or providing any notice to the U.S. government. Consarc has not received notice that any of these countries might put its furnaces to nuclear weapons use, so no license for such sales would be required, even under Section 778.3.

Consarc, in fact, now has an application from Romania for furnaces comparable to those that Iraq ordered. If Consarc fills this order, there will be a fairly obvious risk that the furnaces will not stay in Romania.

In view of the White House’s action in the Consarc case, the U.S. decision to decontrol the furnaces seems to have been a mistake. If the Bush administration believes, as it clearly does, that the furnaces would help Iraq make nuclear bombs and missiles, the Commerce Department should not have dropped the furnaces from the export control list.

Supercomputers for Brazil:

In addition to these two cases, another is nearing resolution now. The State and Commerce Departments want to approve the export of an I.B.M. supercomputer to Brazil. Supercomputers were invented to design nuclear weapons for the U.S. arsenal and are the single most powerful tool for designing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. The supercomputer would be sold to Embraer, the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer.

Embraer’s stated use for the supercomputer is aircraft design. However, the programs for calculating air flows around aircraft noses and wings are essentially the same as those for calculating the forces acting on missile noses and fins, and are closely similar to those for modeling nuclear explosions. Embraer is located next door to and exchanges personnel with CTA, Brazil’s Aerospace Technology Center. CTA’s scientists, who have converted all of Brazil’s space rockets into missiles, will have access to Embraer’s supercomputer and could use it for military purposes.

Furthermore, Embraer and CTA have both contributed personnel to the Brazilian team in Baghdad that is helping Iraq extend the range of its SCUD missiles. These high-tech mercenaries will have direct access to Embraer’s supercomputer and could share its calculations with their Iraqi customers. For the sake of making a sale, the State and Commerce Departments are willing to transfer a tool to Brazil that could enhance Iraq’s ability to threaten U.S. and allied forces in the Middle East with ballistic missiles, possibly carrying chemical warheads.

In addition to calculating the forces acting on a missile in flight, supercomputers can simulate the implosive shock wave that detonates a nuclear weapon, calculate the multiplication of neutrons in a chain reaction, and model the nuclear fusion reaction in a thermonuclear explosion. CTA is an integral part of Brazil’s “parallel” nuclear program and has enriched uranium nearly to nuclear weapons grade in Brazil. Iraq is also working to master this process, so there is the risk that Iraqi weapons designers could receive the data on nuclear explosions generated by Brazil’s supercomputer through CTA. The I.B.M. supercomputer could thus help design the Iraqi bomb as well as Iraqi missiles.

The Commerce Department’s regulations require that a country seeking to purchase a U.S. supercomputer should have good “nonproliferation credentials.” The applicant should be a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, have opened all of its nuclear activities to international inspection, have a nuclear trade agreement with the United States, and be generally cooperative on nuclear non-proliferation policy matters. Brazil meets none of these criteria, and is a major military exporter to Iraq and other countries. In other words, Brazil is exactly the kind of country that makes export controls necessary. However, Commerce and State nevertheless think Brazil should receive a supercomputer. If such transfers can take place, it is fair to ask why we have export controls at all.

Other U.S. sales:

These cases now seem to be the rule rather than the exception. Over the past six years, the United States has exported–to Iraq alone–such dual-use technologies as high-speed oscilloscopes and mainframe computers that can be used for missile design, and millions of dollars’ worth of electronic devices that can be used for chemical testing and the production of chemical weapons. Most recently it was revealed that the United States licensed the export to Iraq of image enhancing equipment with aerial reconnaissance and missile targeting applications.

Iraq rightfully is the center of concern today, but military programs in other Third World countries are also progressing, and if we do not find an effective way to manage this problem we will have to mount sequels to Operation Desert Shield to undo what American suppliers have done elsewhere.

Flaws in the System

Our export control system is breaking down for two reasons: first, because the wrong people are in charge of it, and second, because it is secret.

It has frequently been said that there is a conflict between the Commerce Department’s duty to promote exports and its duty to regulate them–that Commerce has conflicting missions in the export field. The Consarc case illustrates this problem. Although Consarc explicitly told Commerce last year that the skull furnace could aid Iraq’s nuclear program, Commerce nevertheless decided that no license was necessary.

The furnace was not an isolated piece of equipment. It was intended to fit into a production line with other furnaces that together could mass-produce atomic bomb and missile parts. To understand the implications of Iraq’s purchase, one had to understand how the furnaces fit together into a system and know the current status of Iraq’s nuclear weapon and missile production efforts. To understand all of that, one had to consult experts at the Pentagon, the Department of Energy, the State Department, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Commerce apparently failed to do so.

The furnace was only a single element of Iraq’s overall procurement effort. Iraq has fielded a worldwide team dedicated to acquiring everything it needs to mass-produce nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and long-range missiles. Iraq will try to buy the components of this war machine from different suppliers, one at a time, hoping that the totality of its efforts will not be understood. There is no hope of stopping Iraq without referring individual export cases to the U.S. agencies charged with tracking Iraq’s purchasing and development efforts.

I believe that the responsibility for licensing exports of dual-use items should be removed from the Commerce Department and given either to an independent regulatory agency such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or to some other department, such as Defense or State, that has no export promotion function. It is essential to recognize that the number of dual-use items on the control list is small; that well over 90% of the applications to export them are granted; and that the value of the few applications which are denied is tiny compared to the overall value of U.S. foreign trade. The only real significance of these items is strategic, not economic. The place to decide strategic questions is not the Commerce Department, which is only concerned with the economic aspects of trade. The proper place to do so is an agency that specializes in security questions.

The best-known example of a federal agency that tried to promote and regulate at the same time is the old Atomic Energy Commission, which had the job of both promoting and regulating nuclear energy until 1974, when the functions were split. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission now regulates; the Department of Energy promotes. The regulatory process gained credibility and effectiveness from this separation.

The other important lesson we can draw from the is the great benefit of making decisions in public. All of NRC’s export decisions are made on the public record and in the light of day. This is the main reason why we are not hearing horror stories about U.S. nuclear exports to Iraq. Hardly anyone would want to defend such a transaction in public. Notwithstanding the NRC’s openness, our nuclear industry still seems to compete effectively on the international market.

The Commerce Department’s process is secret. Neither Congress not the public is permitted to examine in the open the record of what Commerce has sent to Iraq over the last five years. Cases come into public view only when someone inside the government becomes angry enough to leak them to the press. This is true despite the fact that all the dual-use exports that Commerce licenses are for civilian commodities restricted to peaceful use.

Congress should now require Commerce to disclose what the United States has sent Iraq over the last five years. Without that knowledge, we do not know what our military forces may be facing there, and don’t have any facts upon which to judge the licensing process. Commerce could publish the data easily by releasing the annual summaries of the licenses granted for dual-use items on the Commodity Control List. These annual summaries already exist in a database. They could be published by pushing a button. They would tell Congress and the public exactly what high-technology U.S. exports we now face in Iraq, and what we may face in the future as Iraq makes use of the exports. There is no excuse for not doing this. All of the exports were of civilian products, and all of the transactions have been completed. There is no risk that pending transactions will be revealed.

In the future, Commerce should be required to publish quarterly summaries of cases decided, so that Congress and the public can see what sort of exports are being approved. This light on the process would go a long way toward solving our dual-use export problem. Today, only the exporters know what cases are pending, and only the exporters’ voices are heard by the licensing officers when decisions must be made. The public and Congress are frozen out of the process.

Scope of International Export Controls

The final topic I would like to discuss is the recent decision to reduce the export controls applied through Cocom. As I have already stated, the United States dropped export controls on skull furnaces on July 1. Among the other sensitive commodities dropped from the list are:

Item (by old ECCN number) Comments

1075 Spin forming machines U.S. officials tried to prevent Iraq from getting these machines from Germany. They are used to make uranium gas centrifuges for converting natural uranium to nuclear weapon material

1129 Vacuum pumps Last year, U.S. officials seized vacuum pumps that Iraq was trying to import from the U.S. without a license. They are used to pump fragile uranium gas through centrifuges

1635 Maraging steel In 1987, U.S. officials arrested a Pakistani in Philadelphia for trying to smuggle maraging steel out of the U.S. Maraging steel is used to make the thin metal walls of uranium gas centrifuges

In addition to the above items, there is a second group that the United States has dropped off the licensing list for Eastern Europe, but has kept on the list for developing countries with nuclear and missile ambitions. These include the nuclear weapon triggers called krytrons that Iraq tried to smuggle out of the United States in March.

Iraq cannot buy these triggers directly from the United States without a license. But Iraq can order them through Romania. It is perfectly legal to ship U.S. triggers in large quantities to Romania (or Hungary or Czechoslovakia) without a license. This means that there is no obligation to notify the U.S. government of the shipment, ask the buyer for an end use statement or restrict the triggers’ re-sale. Thus the triggers can go to Iraq through Romania without breaking any laws. This gap in the U.S. control system is another mistake. There is no point in barring Iraq from buying directly what it can legally buy indirectly. The only apparent effect of such a system is to enrich Eastern Europe through brokers’ fees.

Following are some of the items in this category:

Item (by old ECCN number) Comment

1312 Isostatic presses Uses high temperature and pressure to press plutonium to the exact size needed for fission bomb cores, and can form “carbon-carbon” for missile nose cones and nozzles. Lower-performance presses are now cleared for Eastern Europe

1541 Cathode ray tubes Used as displays for oscilloscopes (item 1584 below)

1542 Cold cathode tubes Includes the krytrons Iraq tried to smuggle out of the United States in March, and triggered spark gaps, both of which can trigger the rapid electric discharge that detonates a nuclear explosion

1559 Hydrogen thyratrons Same nuclear triggering function as cold cathode tubes–larger than krytrons, better than triggered spark gaps

1584 High-speed oscilloscopes Can process the rapid data from nuclear tests, help develop missile guidance systems, and sort the data from missile flight tests

A few of the items that Cocom dropped are still on the U.S. export list for all destinations, meaning that they require a license even for Eastern Europe. These are mainly items useful for making long-range missiles. Iraq therefore cannot buy these items directly from the United States without a license, or order them through Eastern Europe without a license.

The problem is that Iraq may be able to buy them from other members of Cocom without a license. The Cocom list is the only basis for export control in most European members of Cocom. Although Cocom is only supposed to deny technology to Communist countries, most of the West Europeans have not distinguished between keeping technology away from the Warsaw Pact and keeping it away from the Third World. Thus, when an item falls off the Cocom list, it simply drops out of these countries’ export licensing systems. This is true of the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, and undoubtedly of other members of Cocom.

The UK, for example, was holding up Consarc’s two furnaces in Scotland before the U.N. embargo against Iraq took effect. without the embargo, however, U.K. officials would not seem to have any legal basis for blocking the shipment even in light of its probable nuclear application.

Some of our Cocom partners adhere to the Missile Technology Control Regime, a seven-country accord including the United States whose members agree not to export long-range rockets or the means to make them. U.S. officials have asked the other MTCR members to refrain from exporting the decontrolled items. But in view of the existing disputes among the members over what the regime covers, it is not clear what effect these U.S. requests will have. For example, the other members are not likely to regard Eastern European countries as missile proliferation threats. This will mean that Iraq can order these items from other Cocom members through Romania.

The items in this category appear to be limited to the following two, which the Commerce Department designated as being of special concern for missile proliferation in March, but which were deleted from the Cocom list in June:

Item (by old ECCN number) Comments

1518 Telemetering and Used in missile guidance
telecontrol equipment to receive data from missile flight tests and to guide pilotless aircraft and missiles

1587 Quartz crystals Useful in radars, electronic warfare and lasers

By the end of 1990, the entire “industrial list” of dual-use items will be dropped. In its place will be a much smaller “core group” of items restricted to eight specific categories. Unfortunately, the categories do not seem to include several sensitive items that the United States has tried for years to keep away from proliferant countries. By the end of 1990, these items will probably be available without a license from other Cocom members, even if the United States decides to retain them on the U.S. control list. The items include:

Item (by old ECCN number) Comments

1312 Isostatic presses Same use as described above. Even high-performance presses will be dropped from control by 1991

1357 Filament winding Can produce special fibers for machines the bodies of uranium gas centrifuges (used to produce nuclear weapon material) and for the casings of rocket motors

1553 Flash x-ray devices For years, the Swedes have been criticized for selling these to India, Israel, Pakistan and South Africa, all of which wanted them to study the implosive shock wave that detonates fission bombs

1362 Vibration testing The United States recently
equipment denied India’s request to buy this “shake and bake” equipment, used to test the ability of nuclear warheads and missiles to withstand the forces encountered in use

1585 High-speed cameras “Streak cameras” can follow the shock wave that detonates fission bombs, and can help develop rocket motors

The Brazilian Bomb: South America goes Ballistic

August 13, 1990April 18, 2017 By Gary Milhollin and Gerard White

NEW REPUBLIC
August 13, 1990, p. 10-11

As the United States worries about missiles in the hands of Iraq and other countries in the Middle East, an egregious case of missile proliferation is taking shape in its own back yard. A group of European companies has agreed to sell Brazil the technology to build a rocket motor capable of launching an intercontinental ballistic missile. If the sale goes through, the first non-U.S. ICBM will take up residence in the Western Hemisphere, Brazil will be able to sell long-range missiles to Iraq and Libya (its leading arms clients), and international efforts to stop the spread of large missiles to developing countries will crash to a halt.

The outlines of the deal are clear. The French company Societe Européenne de Propulsion (SEP) is joining forces with Volvo in Sweden, MAN in West Germany, and FN Motors in Belgium to teach Brazil how to produce the powerful Viking rocket engine, developed by France to lift satellites for the European Space Agency. Other European firms—including Saab Space, Alcatel-Kirk, Sfena, and Contraves—will supply Brazilian engineers with extensive training in on-board computers, guidance systems, and the techniques of launching multistage rockets. All of this assistance will enable Brazil to build accurate missiles big enough to carry nuclear warheads.

There is a simple motivation behind the deal: greed. These corporations own a majority share of Arianespace, a holding company for the European Space Agency’s Ariane launch vehicle. Rocket technology is being used as a convenient sweetener to lure Brazil into hiring the Ariane for satellite launches instead of McDonnell-Douglas’s Delta launcher. (McDonnell-Douglas can’t make a similar offer without violating the U.S. Arms Export Control Act.)

France and the Ariane group are practiced in this sort of deal, having traded missile technology for satellite launch contracts since at least 1975. In fact, since its creation, the Ariane group has garnered more than half of the world’s satellite launch market—at the expense of international security. In the mid-1970s SEP invited Indian engineers to participate in the Viking’s development and later licensed India to produce the Viking at home. The French propulsion technology contributed to the development of India’s intermediate-range Agni missile. Not surprisingly, India showed its gratitude by hiring the French-dominated Ariane to launch its satellites. In 1988 Arianespace booked two more Indian satellite launches. At about the same time, France offered India another powerful engine for India’s newest space rocket—also a secret deal.

The agreement with Brazil shows every sign of working the same way. Brazil is now turning its largest and most successful space rocket, the Sonda IV, into an intermediate-range, nuclear-capable missile. The con-version is being handled by a research arm of the Brazilian Air Force called CTA (the Aerospace Technology Center). Besides converting the Sonda IV to a missile, CTA is also converting natural uranium into nuclear-weapon-grade material at a secret installation, according to press reports confirmed by US. officials. There is no reason to expect that CTA will keep Brazil’s obligatory promise to restrict the European rocket technology to peaceful use. In fact, Brazil is already breaking a peaceful use pledge to West Germany. To import German nuclear equipment, Brazil promised to allow inter-national inspectors to verify that it would not be used to make atomic bombs. Not only has Brazil refused to allow inspections, it has even shifted German-trained engineers from the civilian to the military side of its nuclear program.

Brazil is one of the world’s largest arms exporters to the Third World. Its first three space rockets, the Sonda I, II, and III, were all developed into surface-to-surface missiles that Iraq, Libya, and Saudi Arabia purchased right off the production line. U.S. officials have con-firmed reports that Brazil is currently trying to produce a nuclear-capable missile for Libya and Iraq. Both Libya and Iraq already make poison gas for missile warheads and want to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq has sent a representative to look at a Brazilian missile prototype, and Libya has offered to finance Brazil’s missile development program in exchange for a supply of missiles and the technology to make them.

Brazil has publicly rebuffed US. complaints about its cooperation with Libya and Iraq. In 1987 the Missile Technology Control Regime (Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, West Germany, and the United States) agreed to restrict sales of any rocket that could carry a 500 kilogram payload a distance of more than 300 kilometers—limits the Viking clearly exceeds. Also a part of this nuclear non-proliferation treaty is an agreement not to sell the technology to produce such rockets. The Regime is the only international device for slowing missile proliferation. Although only a “gentle-man’s agreement” without international legal status or sanctions, it helps stigmatize such sales by providing a focus for international disapproval.

Brazil, which has publicly rejected the treaty, is exactly the kind of country the Regime’s drafters had in mind when they agreed to restrict missile technology. If France and Germany sell their production technology to Brazil, the Regime will be fatally undermined. No member country will abstain from sales that other members are freely making, and ballistic missiles will spread unchecked. The Ariane group—and the governments of France, Belgium, Sweden, West Germany, Switzerland, and Denmark—all seem perfectly willing to trigger such a free-for-all.

That means the United States must act alone. If President Bush really wanted to stop the Viking deal, he could threaten to cancel more than $50 million worth of SDI contracts held by Aerospatiale, SEP, Contraves, and other Ariane partners. Despite the appeal of this sanction, however, there is another that is faster, cheaper, and at least as powerful: publicity. Detailed public criticism of the offer to Brazil would produce exactly what the companies hope to avoid—public responsibility for their actions. Under cover of secrecy, the exporters can quietly argue their case for export licenses to key officials. With exposure, the deal would founder as the European public demanded explanations from the companies and their respective governments. Just over a year ago Bonn was publicly humiliated by revelations that German companies had sold poison gas technology to Libya for its plant at Rabta. Public disclosure forced the German government to stop its dangerous exports and tighten its lax controls.

The Viking deal is an important test. If it goes through, there is nothing to stop Ariane or other space-launch companies from selling the same technology to Argentina, Brazil’s rival, or to Pakistan, India’s rival. ICBMs could spring up around the globe. And the developed nations will find that for the first time since World War II their greatest threat will come not from super-power confrontation, but from their own exports.

GARY MILHOLLIN is a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and director of the Wisconsin project on Nuclear Arms Control. GERARD WHITE is assistant director of the project.

Must the U.S. Give Brazil and Iraq the Bomb?

July 29, 1990April 3, 2017 By Gary Milhollin. and David Dantzic

The New York Times
July 29, 1990, p. 19

Iraq, with modern armed forces numbering a million and with a leader driven by dangerous ambitions, started a war with Iran, threatens Israel and has rattled its saber against tiny Kuwait. Its President, Saddam Hussein, may not stop at threats if he can complete plans to build weapons of mass destruction.

U.S. technology could contribute to this awful enterprise if senior officials ‘in the Commerce and State Departments have their way. These officials are supporting I.B.M. in an irresponsible attempt to put a supercomputer into the hands of a Brazilian team that is helping Iraq build long-range missiles and that could help it build atomic bombs.

Apparently, Commerce is pushing for the sale at the behest of I.B.M. to promote U.S. exports. State’s support for Commerce appears to be based, as usual in such cases, on a desire to win favor in third world countries. A very high State official has intervened on behalf of the Brazilian buyer, reliable sources say.

The deal is opposed by the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the Energy Department, which are sticking to the Reagan Administration’s policy of denying supercomputers to countries that are trying to make the bomb. It appears that the deal is on the verge of going through.

With a supercomputer, a missile designer can simulate the thrust of a rocket engine, calculate the heat and pressure on a warhead entering the atmosphere and simulate virtually every other force affecting a missile from launch to impact.

ln a third world missile program, a supercomputer can drastically cut development time, costs and the need for flight tests.

According to Brazilian press reports which have been confirmed by U.S officials, the Brazilian team has been training the Iraqis in rocket aerodynamics, flight testing and the control of rocket trajectories. The Brazilians have also shown Iraq how to use on-board electronics and rocket propellants.

The team has been in Iraq since at least the spring of 1989, which helps explain why last December Iraq suddenly launched a space rocket big enough to orbit satellites.

Iraq made the rocket — potentially useful as an intermediate-range missile — by strapping together five Soviet-supplied Scud missiles, which Brazil is also helping Iraq improve. These are the same missiles Iraq used to bombard the civilian population of Teheran — and the same missiles Iraq is aiming at Tel Aviv from a launch site west of Baghdad.

The leader of Brazil’s high-tech mercenaries is Gen. Hugo Piva, the retired director of Brazil’s Aerospace Technology Center, known in Brazil as CTA. At CTA, he was in charge of converting Brazil’s latest space rocket, the Sonda IV, into a missile big enough to carry a nuclear warhead, and of secretly making nuclear weapon material by enriching uranium by using gas centrifuges.

According to West German intelligence, CTA has become so adept at designing centrifuges that it has already enriched uranium almost to nuclear weapon grade. CTA is situated next door to, and exchanges personnel with, Embraer, the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer that wants to buy the I.B.M. supercomputer. Embraer and CTA are both part of Brazil’s team in Iraq.

Iraq, like Brazil, is hoping to make nuclear weapon material. It has bought a machine for manufacturing centrifuges from a company in West Germany. The German company has already sold such a machine to Brazil. The magazine Der Spiegel has reported that there is a dense network of relations between nuclear bomb builders in Iraq and Brazil, on the one hand, and German contractors on the other.

CTA’s nuclear scientists in Brazil can gain access to the supercomputer through Embraer and can share nuclear calculations with their Iraqi customers.

For an atomic bomb designer, a supercomputer can simulate the implosive shock wave that detonates nuclear warheads, calculate the multiplication of neutrons. in a nuclear chain reaction and model the process of nuclear fusion in a hydrogen bomb.

Thus, the I.B.M. supercomputer.may help design the Iraqi bomb as well as Iraqi missiles.

Commerce Department regulations require that a country should have good “nonproliferation credentials” to buy a U.S. supercomputer. The country should be a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, have all of its nuclear activities under international inspection and have a nuclear trade agreement with the U.S. Brazil fails on every count.

Nonetheless, the Commerce and State Department officials, along with I.B.M., argue — absurdly, naively or cynically — that Brazil should be excused from these requirements because U.S. agents would be able to inspect the supercomputer and prevent its misapplication.

I.B.M. says it has no evidence of any relationship between Embraer and Iraq. Is I.B.M.’s head buried in the sand?

Embraer will be free to design aircraft — to compute air flows around aircraft noses and wings. The programs for making such calculations are the same as those for calculating such flows around missile noses and fins, and strongly resemble those for modeling nuclear explosions. American inspectors probably will not be able to detect any violation. State and Commerce Department officials, along with I.B.M., are on a perilous course. For their separate reasons, they are ready to ignore Brazil’s outrageous aid to Iraq and risk helping Brazil and Iraq get the bomb. They are sending the world an ominous signal: profits and vague diplomatic goals mean more than nuclear proliferation.

Attention, Nuke-Mart Shoppers!

July 22, 1990April 3, 2017 By Gary Milhollin

The Washington Post
July 22, 1990, p. C2

On July 1, the United States and its allies lifted export controls on the very nuclear weapon triggers — called “krytons” — that Iraq tired to smuggle out of the United States in March. Now Iraq can buy these triggers over the counter in Eastern Europe. So can Pakistan, India, Israel, South Africa and any other country trying to make nuclear weapons.

Also decontrolled were “skull furnaces,” which Iraq has been trying to get from a company in New Jersey. The furnaces can melt plutonium for nuclear bomb cores and melt titanium for missile nose cones. They are now on a dock in the Delaware River, blocked by the Pentagon on the last legal ground possible: that the exporter “knows or has reason to know” that they will be used in “fabricating . . . nuclear weapons.” This remarkable stand is the first U.S. declaration that Iraq has an active A-bomb effort.

The move to decontrol was made by Cocom, the Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls, composed of Australia, Japan and all the NATO countries except Iceland. The intent was to help Eastern Europe develop its economy. But the effect will also be to help such countries as Libya and Iraq build nuclear arms.

Through what was apparently an amazing oversight, the Bush administration agreed in a Cocom meeting in June to decontrol 30 categories of strategic equipment — most of which are on the dream list of Third World bomb makers. In the words of one U.S. export official: “This is a big problem the administration missed — they were warned about it but they didn’t listen.”

Cocom also decontrolled spin forming machines (which U.S. officials earlier tried to stop Iraq from getting from Germany) used to make uranium gas centrifuges, as well as vacuum pumps. With fewer than a thousand centrifuges, Iraq can produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one Hiroshima-size bomb per year. With vacuum pumps, Iraq can move fragile uranium gas through the centrifuges. Only last year, U.S. officials seized vacuum pumps that Iraq was trying to import from the United States without a license.

These deletions are just the beginning. Want some “maraging steel”? In 1987, a Pakistani was arrested in Philadelphia for trying to smuggle this special alloy — particularly suited for making centrifuges — out of the United States. Now, anybody can buy it by the ton. How about a plasma torch, or a high-speed oscilloscope? Plasma torches can nickel-plate the surface of a plutonium metal bomb core, such as the one that destroyed Nagasaki. Plating makes the core safe to handle. High-speed oscilloscopes can process the rapid data from nuclear tests. They can also help develop missile guidance systems, and can receive and sort the data from missile flight tests. Now both will go to the highest bidder.

Three factors make this decontrol a bonanza for neophyte bomb makers. First, when an item is dropped from the Cocom list, it can be sold to buyers in Eastern Europe without a license. Nuclear triggers can go to Romania, Hungary or Czechoslovakia like bags of onions. There will be no shipment records and no limits on re-export. This means that Iraq, Iran or Libya can order U.S. A-bomb triggers (and oscilloscopes) through Eastern Europe without breaking any laws. So can Pakistan, India or any other country that wants to make the bomb. Iraq and Libya have already used European front companies to import chemical weapon plants.

Second, these items will drop off Cocom control lists in western Europe. Although Cocom is supposed to deny technology only to Communist countries, our European allies have not distinguished between keeping technology away from the Warsaw Pact and keeping it away from Third World bomb makers. “When we send something to India, we are prepared to see it go to the Soviet Union,” said a British spokesman on U.K. export controls. Britain shares this approach with Italy, Spain and other European countries. Thus, when an item falls off the Cocom list, it simply drops out of these countries’ licensing systems.

Third, even if there were some strings attached to sales to Eastern Europe (such as a pledge not to re-export an item without permission) there would still be a great risk of diversion. These cash-starved regimes do not have functioning export control systems. Until they do, their companies can break the conditions of sale at minimal risk.

Cocom made these changes because German exporters, celebrating the end of the Cold War, demanded cuts in the control list. Faced with this demand, the Joint Chiefs of Staff produced a study that selected the few technologies the Pentagon thought it needed to stay ahead of the Soviets — “stealth” airplanes being an example. The Chiefs then agreed to decontrol the rest. For the Chiefs, it was more important to fight the Cold War than to stop the spread of the bomb. As usual, the generals were thinking of the last war.

What makes these changes so important is that they are happening at the very moment when the Third World is rushing to build weapons of mass destruction. In the Middle East, Iran, Iraq and Libya have all imported chemical weapons plants. They are now trying to import nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. In South Asia, India and Pakistan are threatening to have the world’s first nuclear-armed border war — made possible by nuclear imports. In South America, Argentina and Brazil are teetering at the nuclear brink. And elsewhere, Israel and South Africa, pursuing their unique alliance, are building and testing long-range missiles together. In the 1990s, the East-West arms race is being replaced by a North-South arms race. Our export policies have not caught up with that fact.

What can be done? “The best solution,” said one U.S. official, “would be to back up and do it right the first time.” By that he meant that we should not have thrown out East-West controls before making sure that North-South controls stayed in place. Although legislation might help, neither of the two export bills pending in Congress recognizes the problem. According to a Senate staffer, the House bill, which loosens controls even more, “might as well be called the Proliferation Facilitation Act.”

In our haste, we have made the best solution impossible. Now, we can only try to back-fit controls before too much bomb and missile technology rushes from the North to the South.

U.S. law, which still controls several items dropped off the Cocom list, shows how that might be done. Because of U.S. policy against nuclear and missile proliferation, the U.S. goods that can now go to Eastern Europe still cannot be exported directly to Third World bomb makers. For our NATO partners to adopt similar rules, they would have to declare frankly that they oppose the spread of nuclear bombs and missiles — and be ready to take the heat from the Third World. No longer could they blame Cocom for standing between them and their customers. So far, it is not clear that they will do that. If they don’t, their companies will start selling the means to make the bomb, regardless of what the United States does.

But even if our NATO allies cooperate, we will need the cooperation of the old East Bloc. It will do no good to stop sales from western Europe if Iraq and Libya can fill their orders through Eastern Europe. Bringing in the East Bloc would also put a fence around the technology that Eastern Europe is developing on its own. What we need is an anti-proliferation fence around both Eastern and Western Europe.

There are three ways to build it: use the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, use the European Community, or use a new version of Cocom. The Treaty probably won’t work. Although its members have already agreed to control a list of exports, the treaty’s peculiar language limits the list to plutonium and enriched uranium — the two fission bomb fuels — and the equipment directly needed to make them. The list does not cover the hundred or so other commodities — such as nuclear weapon triggers — that are used to make or test nuclear bombs but do not produce bomb fuel. Such commodities are known as “dual-use items” — they also have civilian applications. Treaty members have consistently refused to expand the treaty’s list to cover these items.

The European Community probably won’t work either. Although it already contains the NATO countries, and may soon bring in Eastern Europe, it is still in the formative stages, has many other issues to face and has little competence in export control. Furthermore, the United States has no official access to EC deliberations.

The best choice for controlling nuclear commodities is a new Cocom — with a new mission aimed at nuclear and missile non-proliferation instead of the East-West arms race. To make such a group work, the East Bloc would have to join.

But would it? Eastern Europe obviously won’t join in order to obtain the technology that Cocom has already decontrolled. Now, the West must offer a different incentive. One such incentive is economic aid. Export controls would be a small price to pay for such a boost.

The second carrot in Western hands is the technology that Cocom still controls. Cocom could gradually exchange this technology for cooperation on North-South issues. This would appeal to the Soviet Union, which wants the technology and has its own special concerns about nuclear proliferation. There is no reason why the entire East Bloc could not become part of a new group (with a new name) that included Cocom and operated in the same informal way as Cocom does.

The new group would have two goals: keeping nuclear bombs and missiles out of the Third World, and promoting trade among its members. Trade would increase along with non-proliferation controls. Organizing this would take some work, and there would still be a transition period during which NATO members of the new group denied technology to Warsaw Pact members. The result, however, would be much better than spreading the bomb to the Third World.

Testimony: Iraqi Efforts to Build WMD

June 15, 1990April 4, 2017 By Gary Milhollin

Testimony of Gary Milhollin

Director, Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control

Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

June 15, 1990

I am pleased to have this opportunity to address the Se4ate Foreign Relations Committee on the subject of Iraq’s effort to build nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and long-range missiles.

I am a member of the University of Wisconsin Law School faculty and director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control in Washington, D.C.–a project devoted to slowing the spread of nuclear weapons to developing countries.

Iraq has now begun a great experiment. After importing the means to make chemical weapons, it is trying to import the means to make nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. The experiment will consist of testing the export control systems of the
developed countries to see whether such an effort can succeed.

At present, Iraq has no means of making nuclear weapon material. Its forty megawatt, French-supplied nuclear reactor called Osirak is not operating. The reactor is still suffering the consequences of having been bombed by Israel with U.S. planes in 1981. If the reactor is rebuilt, it could make enough plutonium for up to two atomic bombs per year. There has been one report that the reactor may be about to start, but the International Atomic Energy Agency states that the reactor’s fuel has not been taken out of storage.

Iraq is also trying to make enriched uranium–the other nuclear weapon material. It hopes to build gas centrifuges that will enrich natural uranium to nuclear weapon grade. To do so, it has imported machines from Germany for making centrifuge bodies and, according to press reports, special magnets from China that will help the centrifuges operate. It is unknown how far Iraq’s centrifuge effort has progressed.

To make parts for the bomb itself, Iraq tried to smuggle the components for a nuclear weapon triggering system out of the United States in March. The nature of the components, and the fact that Iraq tried to smuggle them, show that they were not intended for peaceful purposes.

Iraq also has an ambitious program for making long-range missiles. It has modified a Soviet-supplied tactical missile to increase its range to about 400 miles, it has tested a longer range version of that missile that flies 560 miles, and it has cooperated with Egypt and Argentina to develop a two-stage, solid fuelled intermediate-range missile. In December 1989, Iraq surprised the world by testing the first stage of a satellite launcher made from five Soviet-style tactical rockets strapped together. During the same month, Iraq claimed that it had tested a ballistic missile with a range of over 1000 miles.

I have appended to my statement tables showing the current status of Iraq’s nuclear and missile programs.

It is clear that Iraq has fielded a well-financed, world¬wide procurement network that will test export controls to their limit. Unfortunately, the Western countries are weakening their export controls at exactly the same time that this is going on.

Last week, the COCOM countries met in Paris to remove thirty items from the COCOM export control list. COCOM (the Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls to Communist Countries) was set up by the United States and its allies after World War II. COCOM was invented to stop the Soviet Union from getting the American technology going to Europe under the Marshall Plan. Since then, COCOM has expanded to include Japan and all the NATO countries except Iceland. It prohibits high technology exports to the Warsaw Pact and other Communist countries.

Among the items decontrolled last week were the very nuclear weapon triggers that Iraq tried to smuggle out of the United States in March. Also decontrolled were the very machines that Iraq is counting on to make the bodies for its uranium enrichment centrifuges–called spin-forming and flow-forming machines. Although the COCOM countries intended to decontrol these items mainly to benefit the newly-free countries of Eastern Europe, the effect will probably be to decontrol them for Iraq too.

This is true for several reasons. First, by dropping these items from the COCOM list, they will, in the normal course of events, be removed from any licensing control at all for buyers in Eastern Europe. From any COCOM country they can go to Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia like a bag of onions. There will be no record of the shipments. Hence, there will be no control on re¬export from East Europe to other destinations. This means that Iraq can order U.S. bomb triggers through front companies in Eastern Europe without breaking any laws. So can India, Israel, Pakistan, South Africa and any other country that wants to make the bomb or long range missiles.

Second, these items will fall completely off the export control lists of the European members of NATO unless each country makes a special effort to keep them on. Unlike the United States, where the commodities dropped off the COCoM list will still be controlled because of the U.S. policy against nuclear arms proliferation, the COCOM list is the only basis for export control in most European members of NATO. There is no separate control list for stopping nuclear arms proliferation or the spread of ballistic missiles. If an item falls off the COCOM list it drops completely out of these countries’ export control systems. So far, there is not much evidence that our COCOM partners will make a special effort to control these items for nuclear or missile proliferation purposes. If they don’t, our partners’ companies will be able to export the decontrolled items to the Third World directly.

Third, even if there were some form of control over these items when exported to Eastern Europe, there would still be a great risk of diversion. These cash-starved and capital-poor regimes do not have functioning export control systems. There will be a great risk that their companies will break the conditions of sale even if conditions are imposed.

The thirty items taken off in June are just the beginning. By the end of 1990 the entire COCOM export list will be scrapped and a much shorter one substituted. Unless something happens to change things, the deletions will be a giant import bonanza for Third World bomb and missile makers.

Unfortunately, the United States itself is not entirely free of guilt when it comes to exporting to Iraq. During the past few years, the Commerce Department has approved the export of mainframe computers and high speed oscilloscopes to Iraq. High-speed oscilloscopes are uniquely able to process the data from nuclear tests. They are also used to develop, test and maintain missile guidance systems and to receive and sort the telemetry from missile flight tests. It is virtually certain that the U.S. oscilloscopes are now helping Iraq develop ballistic missiles.

It is very likely that the mainframe computers are helping too.

These exports were quietly approved in the days when Iraq was fighting Iran. This short-sighted decision was only possible because the U.S. export control process is secret. The Commerce Department, which makes the export decisions, and the Department of Energy, which keeps the records, refuse to tell the public what cases have been approved or even considered. Not even the export license, which is the official record of a government action, is available despite the fact that all of these exports are required to be for civilian purposes. I believe that if the Commerce Department’s export control process were opened to public and Congressional scrutiny, dangerous exports like the oscilloscopes would not be approved.

There are other examples of U.S. confusion on exports to Iraq. In March 1990, the Commerce Department announced a list of commodities that would be controlled to inhibit missile proliferation. The list was intended to implement the Missile Technology Control Regime, a seven country accord to which the United States is a party. Two of the commodities added to the U.S. list in March, however, were deleted from the COCOM list in June. This means that a U.S. exporter will not be able to send the commodities to Iraq without a validated license, but could send them almost anywhere in Europe without such a license.

Thus, an Iraqi buyer could obtain the U.S. items simply by ordering through a European front company. The United States seems to be controlling the same commodities with one hand that it is trying to decontrol with the other.

The United States has also been too timid in its reaction to Iraqi smuggling. Iraq tried to buy the same switches in March that Israel obtained in 1980 and Pakistan tried to obtain in 1983. Iraq’s chance of success in such a clumsy operation was probably less than ten percent. It is clear that the risk of getting caught was not a deterrent. If the United States is going to stop such brazen actions, it must do more than arrest the small fry that get caught. It must act against the governments that hire them.

This does not appear likely under the current policy of the State Department. According to the Los Angeles Times, the State Department opposed the sting operation against Iraq in March. State said that it preferred to “work quietly with Iraq to discourage Iraq from trying to produce nuclear weapons without creating a public furor…” According to the Washington Post, a State Department official even said that “Our approach has been to try to find common areas to engage Iraq so that the more anti¬social aspects of its nature could be modified in time by drawing it into international activities.”

It is time to recognize that the spread of weapons of mass destruction to countries such as Iraq threatens U.S. security at least as much–and possibly more–than technology transfers to what remains of the Warsaw Pact. The East-West arms race is being replaced by a North-South arms race. We must now change our export policy to accomodate this fact.

Research IRAQ: STATUS OF NUCLEAR REACTORS IN 1990
Type and Start-Up Plutonium Safeguards
Generated
Reactors Capacity Date Through 1989
IRT-5000 Pool; 1967 yes
5-10MWt
Osirak Pool; 40MWt; Destroyed yes
(Tammuz I) HEU fuel in 1981 air strike
Tammuz II Pool; 500-800 1987 yes
(critical assembly) KWt

IRAQ: MISSILES IN SERVICE IN 1990
Name Range Payload Accuracy Comments
(Miles) (Pounds) (CEP in
Yards)

FROG-7
SS-lc Scud-B 40 1000 550- Single stage, solid-
750 fuelled, unguided,
spin-stabilized, with mobile launch platform. Imported from the Soviet
Union.
170- 1900- 975- Single stage,
190 2200 1000 storable liquid-
fuelled, inertially guided, with mobile launch platform. Imported from the Soviet Union.

Al-Husayn 380- 300-860 1760- Single stage,
(modified- 400 3520 storable liquid-
Scud B) fuelled, inertially guided, with mobile launch platform.
Iraqi modification of Soviet Scud.

IRAQ: MISSILES UNDER DEVELOPMENT IN 1990

Name Range (Miles) Payload (Pounds) Accuracy (CEP in Yards)
Al-Abbas 560 250+ 3520-
(modified- 5280
Scud B)
Condor II 500- 1000 N/A ‘
600
Tammouz I 1250 N/A N/A

Asia’s Nuclear Nightmare: The German Connection

June 10, 1990April 3, 2017 By Gary Milhollin

The Washington Post
June 10, 1990, p. C1

Despite the summit’s rosy afterglow, the risk of nuclear war is higher now than at any time in the past decade — but not between the superpowers. The Pentagon and State Department now believe that there is a real chance of war in South Asia over the disputed province of Kashmir. That outcome is not inevitable. But if fighting does erupt between India and Pakistan, each side must assume that the other will deploy and possibly use an atomic bomb. If such a thing happens, West Germany will be primarily to blame.

A constant flow of German exports has brought India and Pakistan to the brink of nuclear deployment. As I learned in meetings in May with high officials in both countries, neither side has a clear nuclear strategy. And no one knows how to prevent the next Indo-Pakistani border conflict from becoming atomic.

Pakistan took its first big step toward the bomb between 1977 and 1980. To convert natural uranium to gaseous form — an essential step in enriching it to weapons grade — Pakistan bought a giant, multi-million-dollar plant from West Germany. Sixty truckloads of parts, in broad daylight, rolled out of Freiburg in violation of German law. The exporter, Albrecht Migule, was fined $ 10,000 and allowed to stay in business.

A few years later, Pakistan needed the special steel, electronics and processing vessels to finally produce nuclear-weapon material. Pakistan made the crucial purchases from other German firms, including Arbed Staarstahl, Leybold-Heraeus, NTG and PTB. To actually make the internals of the bomb, Pakistan imported high-precision milling machines and special “isostatic” presses — from still more German firms. All this equipment was on the “international list” of export item that Germany, like Japan and most NATO countries, has agreed to restrict for strategic purposes.

“You never hear anything, you never see anything and you never block anything”: That’s the motto of Germany’s export controllers, a member of the German parliament told Der Spiegel.

Not content to have mastered simple fission bombs, Pakistan decided to climb the nuclear ladder. To get tritium — a radioactive isotope of hydrogen used to produce fusion — Pakistan secretly bought the design for a tritium-making reactor from NTG. NTG and another German firm, PTB, even threw in the equipment for making the reactor fuel rods. To convert the reactor’s tritium output to nuclear-weapon grade, NTG and PTB also supplied a giant tritium purification plant and some tritium to test it. “A civilian use of the tritium gas produced by the plant,” said the German prosecutor who investigated the NTG export, “is not plausible.” Earlier this year, Germany charged the former directors of NTG and PTB with violating export laws.

With tritium-induced fusion, Pakistan could make its bombs five to 10 times more powerful. All of the exports were secret, few had any civilian purpose and most violated German obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. While Germany was supplying Pakistan, it was also supplying India. By 1982, India’s nuclear effort had limped to a halt. It was paralyzed by a shortage of “heavy water,” a rare form containing deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen. It looks and even tastes like ordinary water but is used in reactors that convert uranium into plutonium — the fuel for nuclear weapons.

Fires and explosions at heavy-water production plants had cut India’s output to a trickle. There was only one solution to India’s problem: imports. That was easy if India agreed to international inspection, so that the plutonium its reactors made could not go into atomic bombs. The exporters of heavy water required such a pledge under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But India wanted to import the water without the pledge, so it could keep the nuclear weapon option open. To do that, India needed a peculiar kind of supplier.

India found nuclear-materials broker Alfred Hempel, operating out of Dusseldorf. From 1983 to 1987, Hempel (an ex-Nazi who died in 1989) smuggled India enough heavy water to start three large reactors. Together, those facilities now make enough plutonium for 40 atomic bombs per year. Hempel’s secret heavy water shipments, which totalled at least 250 tons, allowed Indian reactors to escape international controls for the first time. India could finally build a nuclear arsenal and change the strategic balance in Asia.

But Hempel too had a problem: He needed protection. U.S. intelligence had caught wind of him in early 1981. In secret cables, the State Department began alerting German officials to Hempel’s shipments. In one cable to the German Foreign Office — which included flight plans and stopover points — American diplomats pleaded that “timely action by the Federal Republic is essential if the shipment is to be stopped.” But in an Economics Ministry internal memo, a German official observed that Hempel’s firm had been “developed with Russian capital” and dismissed the American plea as “politically motivated.”

Not until November 1983 did German auditors open Hempel’s books, in response to U.S. complaints. They found that for 46.5 million German marks, Hempel had already shipped 60 tons of Chinese-origin heavy water to Bombay in 1982 and 1983. This was exactly what India needed to start its first reactor free of inspection.

The German Economics Ministry did nothing. Its excuse was that, according to the audit, Hempel had made the deal through a Swiss subsidiary, beyond the scope of German law.

In 1985, the Swiss started complaining. Bonn’s embassy in Berne cabled the German foreign office in July to report that Hempel had just smuggled a shipment of Soviet-origin heavy water through the Zurich airport. In a second cable, the embassy reported that the Swiss were “convinced that misdealings occurred.”

German officials, however, still did not act. A bureaucrat at the Economics Ministry wrote in an internal memo that Hempel “is well known here,” and that under German law “there is no leverage in this case.” After Bonn did nothing, Berne cabled again in February 1986. Hempel had just tried to smuggle a second Soviet shipment through Zurich. This time, another Economics Ministry official was more specific: Hempel’s “consortium of firms enjoys extraordinarily good relations with the East (Soviet Bloc). In my opinion, this would constitute an additional reason not to subject his firms to a foreign trade audit.” With the 1985 and 1986 shipments, India started its second and third reactors free of inspection.

By 1988, even Norway was complaining. In May 1988 Norway discovered that Hempel had diverted 15 tons of Norwegian heavy water that was supposed to go to Germany in 1983. Hempel had flown the water instead to Switzerland, where he combined it with 4.7 tons of Soviet water secretly trucked in from Kiev, and sent the whole lot to Bombay. Norway complained that the deal violated pledges in German shipping papers it had received — documents that promised delivery to Frankfurt. German officials agreed, but explained in an Economics Ministry memo that Germany was blameless because the shipments “did not touch the national territory of the Federal Republic.”

In fact, the Soviet shipment spent several days rolling across West Germany illegally in December 1983. If German officials had followed up their November 1983 audit of Hempel, which revealed the secret Chinese shipments, they would have found the illegal December shipment and could have arrested Hempel in early 1984. Even under Germany’s weak laws, this would have prevented the hundreds of tons of secret heavy-water shipments that Hempel made from 1984 to 1987. But German officials, it seems, weren’t interested. Neither Hempel nor his agents were prosecuted. India and Pakistan must now decide what to do with their German imports. As I One senior official, describing India’s newest nuclear missile, told me last month that it “has no real strategic purpose.” India and Pakistan now realize that they, like the United States in World War II, built the bomb without knowing what they would do with it. America only wanted to get the bomb before Hitler did. No one thought of using it against Japan until events pushed that question forward. India and Pakistan also built the bomb defensively: India to counter China; Pakistan to counter India. But like the United States, India and Pakistan may find that the momentum of events can make the question of nuclear use very real.

In the most likely conflict scenario, India would try to destroy Pakistan’s air force in the first hours or days — the standard opening of modern war. With two or three times as many planes as Pakistan, India could hope to succeed. India’s superior army would also invade Pakistan’s long, hard-to-defend border. Pakistan does not seem to have a reliable nuclear missile, so its dozen or so bombs will have to be delivered with aircraft. The rapid loss of airfields and planes, coupled with invasion, could pose the nuclear question quickly. Pakistan’s leaders would have three choices: use the bomb, lose the bomb or move the bomb.

Using it would mean making a nuclear threat, and following through if the threat failed. This is a high-risk proposition that only a country being overwhelmed would entertain — meaning that Pakistan could entertain it. Pakistani leaders would have to communicate the threat in the chaos of combat, while reports of aircraft losses were pouring in — the worst time for reflection on either side. The second option would be for Pakistan to watch the last squadron of its planes succumb without making the nuclear threat. This would mean losing the bomb by losing the means to deliver it. The advantage would be the survival of millions of Pakistanis who could otherwise perish in the Indian response to option one.

Moving the bomb — probably to Pakistan’s ally, China — would be a compromise. It would put the bomb where it was safe, but couldn’t be used. China would probably take in Pakistan’s nuclear hardware but forbid its deployment from Chinese territory. The bomb, having failed to deter war, might someday return in peace to whatever was left of Pakistan after the conflict. These alternatives are grim. To improve them, one needs to lengthen the time for decisions. Both sides would be better off if a quick nuclear showdown could be avoided. They would have a chance to stop fighting before one of them dragged the other over the brink. More time would also allow other countries to intervene and broker a cease-fire.

There is one device that might buy a crucial amount of time. Pakistan and India have already signed an agreement not to attack each other’s nuclear plants. They could extend this idea by granting each other a sanctuary that neither would attack by air, and from which neither would launch an attack by air. The zone would be big enough to hide a squadron of aircraft. Each side could define its own zone’s boundaries — 100 or so square miles — and put whatever it wanted inside.

As long as the parties observed the agreement, both sides’ nuclear forces would be preserved. Each side could avoid forcing a hasty nuclear decision on the other; and if conflict ended early, or ended before either side’s national existence were threatened, neither Pakistan nor India would necessarily have to decide whether to use a nuclear weapon. Pakistan’s zone could be on its border with China, so removal would still be an option if Indian ground troops threatened to overrun the zone. The non-attack pledge would preserve the nuclear status quo in the early hours or days of war, when removal might seem less attractive or still have to be negotiated.

Would India refuse to join, hoping to knock out Pakistan’s whole air force at once? India could not count on doing that. If it failed, it would force Pakistan to weigh a nuclear threat — a risk that India should prefer to avoid. Would Pakistan refuse to join, hoping to save a few planes by hiding them well? If Pakistan failed to hide them well enough, it would be worse off than with a sanctuary covering its northern caves next to China, where it would probably hide the planes anyway. Would the agreement be too risky, because one side could break it without warning? Breaking it would be risky too, because neither side could be sure of getting all of the other’s planes, which would take off with whatever they were carrying when attacked. Their load probably would not be conventional weapons.

All this assumes that neither side would launch a first strike. India doesn’t need to because its vast army can handle Pakistan without the bomb. Pakistan wouldn’t be able to because India’s near-billion population (and larger nuclear force) could absorb a Pakistani attack and still retaliate. The greatest danger of a nuclear strike — absurd as it may sound — could be in a chaotic moment when the bomb itself was in danger of being lost.

Germany’s reckless acts have now brought two poor countries to the nuclear threshold. Because of a disputed border, India and Pakistan are about to learn whether nuclear deterrence really works. Germany should be condemned for producing this result. At this critical moment of its unification, Germany should admit its sins and lead the effort to pull South Asia back from the brink.

Gary Milhollin, a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Law, is director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.

Israel’s A-Bombs and Norway’s Heavy Water: The Steps to Revelation

April 1, 1990April 4, 2017

To view the timeline, click here: Israel’s A-Bombs and Norway’s Heavy Water: The Steps to Revelation

Why Are We Helping the Third World Go Nuclear?

April 1, 1990April 4, 2017 By Gary Milhollin

The Washington Post
April 1, 1990, p. C1

Last week’s allegations of a plot to smuggle nuclear warhead detonators from the United States to Iraq, together with reports that China was resuming its secret sales of ballistic missiles to the Middle East, have refocused attention on a frightening fact of modern life: Third-World tyrants, armed with missiles and A-bombs, are fast replacing the Soviets as the greatest threat to American cities.

Yet at the same time, a small group of Bush administration officials are working to heighten that threat — by exporting U.S. supercomputers to Brazil, Israel and India, three countries with secret nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs. If the officials succeed, they will reverse the Reagan administration’s policy of keeping these machines away from countries that are trying to get the bomb.

In Brazil, the supercomputers could hasten the day when a nuclear-capable missile is sold to Libya or Iraq, and bring Brazil much closer to finally testing the nuclear weapon it is trying to produce. In Israel, supercomputers could design smaller, lighter nuclear warheads to attack more targets and could reduce the time required before an Israeli missile can bring Moscow within range. In India, the machines could accelerate the development of ICBMs to menace all of China with H-bombs.

The supercomputer was invented in the mid-1970s to design U.S. nuclear weapons. It has since become the most powerful tool known for designing both nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Today, no U.S. nuclear weapon or missile design is physically tested until it is optimized in computer models.

A supercomputer can simulate the implosive shock wave that detonates a nuclear warhead, calculate the multiplication of neutrons in an explosive chain reaction and solve the equations that describe fusion in a hydrogen bomb. For missile design, it can model the thrust of a solid-fuel rocket, calculate the heat and pressure on a warhead entering the atmosphere and simulate virtually every other force affecting a missile from launch to impact. Because of the billions of computations needed to solve these problems, a supercomputer’s speed is invaluable for finding design solutions in a practical length of time.

The lack of such machines will not stop a country from making its first atomic bomb. But with a supercomputer, a country can design more efficient nuclear warheads with a minimum of tests and design long-range missiles to carry the warheads to their destination. For countries with limited money and manpower, those advantages are crucial.

Proponents of the exports argue that there were no supercomputers when the first bombs were built, and thus a supercomputer is not the key to going nuclear. But in the early days the lack of computing power was made up for by tests. The Department of Energy estimates that about 180 physical tests were needed to design the high-explosive part of a 1955-vintage nuclear weapon. Today fewer than five tests are needed because of computation. According to DOE, a team of scientists using the calculators of the 1940s would take five years to do what a Cray supercomputer now does in one second. IBM wants to sell a supercomputer to Embraer, an arm of the Brazilian Air Force in the missile-for-export business. Through its ownership in another firm called Orbita, Embraer is now trying to turn Brazil’s Sonda IV space launcher into an intermediate-range nuclear-capable missile. In January 1988, Libyan arms-buyers offered to pay Orbita’s development costs in exchange for long-range missiles and the means to make them. Brazil publicly rebuffed U.S. protests of the Libyan offer. Embraer also exchanges personnel with the research arm of the Brazilian Air Force, called CTA, which West German intelligence says is secretly making nuclear weapon material. The U.S. supercomputer could wind up designing missiles for Libya and nuclear weapons for Brazil.

The University of Sao Paulo is IBM’s second intended Brazilian customer. West German intelligence says that one of the university’s own institutes is designing centrifuges to enrich uranium — a step leading to atomic bombs. Also on campus is a group called IPEN, which has secretly built lab-scale centrifuges and a plant for extracting plutonium (the nuclear weapon material that destroyed Nagasaki) and is planning a secret reactor that will create enough plutonium for one atomic bomb per year.

Cray — America’s other supercomputer giant — wants to sell a machine to Technion University, the Israeli MIT. In 1987, a Pentagon-sponsored study revealed that Technion was helping design Israel’s ballistic missile re-entry vehicle. According to U.S. officials, Technion’s nuclear physicists work at Israel’s secret nuclear weapon complex at Dimona, where a reactor makes plutonium for atomic bombs. According to a Technion brochure, the Cray that Technion wants to buy will be able to do in one month calculations that now take eight years.

Hebrew University would also get a supercomputer. The Pentagon study found that its physicists work at Israel’s nuclear weapon lab at Soreq, whose scientists were “developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs.” The study added, however, that the Israelis did “not yet have the capability to carry out the necessary calculations.” A U.S. supercomputer would provide exactly that capability.

At the Weizmann Institute, the third Israeli applicant, scientists are studying the high-energy physics and hydrodynamics needed for nuclear bomb design, as well as the use of lasers to enrich uranium — the most advanced method for making nuclear-weapon material.

Israeli Military Industries, the fourth Israeli applicant, makes Israel’s biggest rocket motors. This includes the ones that power the Jericho II intermediate-range missile and the big new Shavit space launcher. NBC News reported in October that Israel is selling the means to make these motors to South Africa. In return, Israel will be able to test the Shavit over the empty ocean off the South African coast. To reach its full range — which includes Moscow and Western Europe — the Shavit will need an accurate re-entry vehicle. This is exactly what IMI’s supercomputer could help design. IMI may even decide to share the computer with its South African customers.

In India, U.S. supercomputers would go to the Indian Institute of Science (IIS) and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). Both are studying stresses on rocket bodies and supersonic combustion. There is even a project to study the performance of solid rocket fuel through computer modelling. All this learning will go straight into missiles. When India launched its first intermediate-range missile in 1989, it used a first-stage solid-fuel rocket produced by the space program. Thus, Indian missiles could profit directly from the U.S. supercomputers.

In May 1989, CIA Director William Webster told a congressional committee that India appeared to be working on a hydrogen bomb. Over the next few years, India will be trying to perfect an efficient fusion warhead and an accurate long-range missile to carry it. Supercomputers could powerfully aid both endeavors. To sugar-coat the sales, proponents are proffering security plans. U.S. government inspectors — whose identity and competence is yet to be defined — could visit computer sites to see who had used the computer and for what. But that may not be possible. Embraer is free to design aircraft — to compute fluid flows around aircraft noses, fuselages and wings. But the computations are basically the same as those used for missiles. Hebrew University is free to study nuclear fusion by using exactly the same computations one needs to design hydrogen bombs. It would be an extraordinary inspection that could detect a violation under such conditions.

To make matters worse, Brazil, Israel and India are already violating inspection agreements made in the past. In order to import West German nuclear equipment, Brazil promised to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to verify that the equipment was not used for weapons. But Brazil has prevented inspection by refusing to report a single one of the numerous German deliveries over the past 10 years. In order to import heavy water to run its Dimona reactor, Israel promised to allow Norway to verify that the water would not be used to make atomic bombs. However, Israel has repeatedly rejected Norway’s demands for inspection. And India promised — as a condition of importing two reactors from the United States for its site at Tarapur — to restrict all the reactors’ plutonium to peaceful use. However, India is now threatening to declare the plutonium — enough for about 320 Nagasaki-sized bombs — free for use in nuclear weapons because of an absurd interpretation of the nuclear sales agreement.

Inspection would also be costly. The sale to Embraer is worth only $ 400,000, the price of two “vector processors.” The processors would raise Embraer’s existing IBM mainframe to supercomputer speed. After U.S. government inspectors visit Brazil several times a year for the next few years, the costs of inspection will easily exceed the profits from the sale. U.S. taxpayers will thus foot the bill for IBM’s decision to sell computers to people whose promises are suspect.

Computer-makers argue that the growth market is now overseas, but the sales figures tell a different story. Cray has sold about 140 supercomputers in the United States and exported about 100 to developed countries and NATO allies — none of which is a proliferation risk. Each machine has a security plan. IBM is estimated to have sold about 300 vector processors to the same market. Compared to these sales, the prospective handful to the proliferators is a drop in the bucket. To get the drop, however, the exporters are ready to put the whole world at risk.

To avoid such a risk, the Commerce Department has issued specific regulations. Five criteria determine whether a country can import U.S. computers: It must belong to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; have all of its nuclear activities under international inspection; have an agreement for nuclear cooperation with the United States; support in its public statements and policies the goal of nuclear non-proliferation; and be generally cooperative on non-proliferation policy matters. None of the candidate nations — Brazil, Israel and India — meets a single one of these criteria. This was why the Reagan administration wouldn’t approve the exports. The proposed sales would make a mockery of U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policy. The United States is now trying to stop France from selling the technology for the “Viking” rocket motor — a powerful, ICBM-sized booster — to Brazil. Our government justly fears that Brazil will use it to make an intercontinental missile. Can we still credibly oppose the sale after hawking supercomputers to the very Brazilians who make such missiles? And about one year ago, the United States stopped West Germany from helping Libya build a poison gas plant. Could the United States credibly do that again, after selling supercomputers to the very Israelis who are working on hydrogen bombs?

If the need to restrain France and Germany were not enough, there is the need to restrain Japan. In 1984, the United States and Japan — the world’s only supercomputer suppliers — agreed not to sell the machines to developing countries that had rejected the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In 1986 they renewed the agreement. All of the proposed exports will breach that accord. If the United States does break faith with Japan by making these deals, the result could be a no-holds-barred race to sell supercomputers to the Third World. Moreover, the loss of the Japan accord would make it impossible to bring new suppliers into it. This would be a disaster for U.S. nonproliferation policy and for world security.

The Commerce Department is already chipping away at the Japan agreement. It wants to raise the agreement’s definition of a supercomputer from 100 to 150 megaflops (million floating-point operations per second — a measure of mathematical computing speed). This would let the University of Sao Paulo get its machine (110 megaflops) without a security plan. The more cautious Japanese want to stay at 100. To justify the boost to 150, IBM and Cray say that their lower-end machines are now nearing the 100-megaflop threshold. Soon, they say, even desktop workstations will have near-supercomputer speed, and the limit should be raised to reflect the advance of technology. By the same logic, however — since the MX missile is better than the early Atlas and the neutron bomb more advanced than our earlier fission devices — we should sell Atlas missiles and ’50s-vintage A-bomb designs to the Third World.

Commerce and State, the departments pushing the deal, are suffering from export-mania and from heavy lobbying by IBM and Cray. Even the Pentagon now favors the exports, despite the fact that it vetoed every one of them under Reagan. Only the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency — with the help of the Department of Energy — seems determined to follow the export rules and preserve U.S. credibility.

President Bush promised after his election to come out swinging against nuclear and missile proliferation. But if export advocates get their way, he will take a dive in the first round.

Gary Milhollin is professor of law at the University of Wisconsin and director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, which tracks the spread of nuclear weapons to developing countries.

Poison Gas Laws: Still Leaking

March 25, 1990March 31, 2017 By Gary Milhollin and Jennifer Weeks

The New York Times
March 25, 1990, Section 4, Page 19

When Libya’s poison-gas plant burned down last week, many people were relieved. Instead, they should have been horrified – just as they were by the recent revelations that Czechoslovakia’s ousted Communist Government had shipped 1,000 tons of lethal Semtex explosives to Libya.

The fire at the plant in Rabta is a symbol of defeat. It did nothing to solve the larger problem of chemical arms proliferation or to mitigate West Germany’s leading role in the spread of nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and long-range missiles to the third world.

After months of denial, German leaders admitted in February 1989 that they had known since 1980 that Libya was developing a chemical-weapons plant. They also acknowledged that they had known since 1986 that a German chemical firm supervised its construction. The resulting investigations led to arrests in 1989 and to pressure for reform of West German export laws.

But now, a year later – even at a time when West Germany is trying to calm its neighbors’ fears about unification – Bonn’s proposals to restrict dangerous exports are mired in the West German Parliament. U.S. officials fear that the restraints will be shelved as reunification crowds other issues off the agenda. Moreover, U.S. Government sources say West German companies are still secretly exporting dangerous materials and technologies.

If sabotage is the only restraint on the spread of weapons of mass destruction, the world should pray for many more disasters. Merely to undo what German suppliers have wrought would require these steps:

An explosion at Iraq’s German-built poison-gas plant at Samarra, a source of the mustard and nerve gases that Iraq used against Iran and Kurdish rebels from 1983 to 1988.
Demolition of Iraq’s Saad-16 armaments project at Mosul, and all of its German-supplied drilling machines, wind tunnels and other missile-production equipment.
Destruction of a Pakistani plant that enriches uranium powder to nuclear-weapons-grade material, smuggled out of West Germany between 1977 and 1980.
Draining hundreds of tons of heavy water, illegally exported from China, Norway and the Soviet Union by a West German broker, from India’s reactors, where it is producing nuclear-weapons-grade plutonium.
The abduction of German-trained engineers in Brazil and the theft of German-supplied equipment that the Brazilians have diverted from their civilian nuclear-power industry to a secret nuclear-weapons program.

West Germany is not the only culprit. Japanese companies built a plant at Rabta (it survived last week’s fire) that makes corrosion-resistant containers for packaging chemical agents in weapons.

The fact is that last-ditch measures don’t work. Libya’s strongman, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, still has stocks of mustard and nerve gas that survived the Rabta fire. If he is determined to make more, he may find stealthier suppliers to help him build another, more secure plant. When he does so, he will still have trained personnel and operational experience from Rabta to guide his efforts.

In so doing, Colonel Qaddafi would be following the lead of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. After Israel’s 1981 air raid destroyed Iraq’s Osirak reactor, Mr. Hussein expanded his weapons factories, dispersed them and hardened them against future strikes. Instead of 11th-hour raids, the first step is for West Germany to pass last year’s export reforms. Companies everywhere that sell sensitive materials to proliferator states should be denounced, and sanctions should be imposed on the governments that fail to control them.

Finally, with the political changes in Europe, arms proliferation must rank higher on everyone’s national-security agenda. Eastern European countries will soon become eligible to import Western technology, technology that their cash-starved governments will be tempted to re-export to the third world.

As the superpowers’ global influence erodes, regional buyers like Iraq will become more ambitious, aggressive and dangerous.

With U.S.-Soviet arms reductions gaining momentum, developing countries will be the most likely sites of conflict in the 1990’s. The only sure way to keep weapons of mass destruction out of their hands is to cut off Western exports at the source.

Gary Milhollin is director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control; Jennifer Weeks is a research specialist with the project.

India’s Missiles – With a Little Help from Our Friends

November 1, 1989April 3, 2017 By Gary Milhollin

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
November 1989, pp. 31-35

Last May 22, India became the first country to test a strategic missile derived from a civilian space program. The missile’s first-stage rocket motor, heat shield, and guidance system all came from India’s space effort — generously launched and sustained by foreign help.

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi claimed that the missile, called “Agni” (fire), is “an R&D vehicle, not a weapons system.” Then he qualified the assertion. “Agni is not a nuclear weapons system,” he said. “What Agni does is to afford us the option of developing the ability to deliver non-nuclear weapons with high precision at long ranges.”

In the May test, the missile reportedly flew 625 miles. But it is designed to carry a one-ton payload 1,500 miles, far enough to hit cities in southern China. Carrying a half-ton atomic bomb, the Agni would be able to fly about 2,200 miles, far enough to hit Beijing.

Whether Agni eventually carries nuclear or conventional weapons, the missile should destroy any illusions about sharing technology in the interest of peaceful uses of outer space. The story of the Agni’s development shows how difficult it is to separate civilian and military uses of technology, and just how futile may be the recent, belated attempts to control the proliferation of military missile technology. A control regime established by seven Western nations in 1987 seeks to prevent precisely this sort of development. [See the June 1988 Bulletin.] Yet the regime has no provisions for enforcement, and the Indian program continued full speed ahead, with some foreign – particularly West German – cooperation, after the regime was adopted.

Lessons in America

Agni’s foreign ancestry dates from the 1960s. In November 1963, the United States began India’s space program by launching a U.S. sounding rocket from Indian soil. (Sounding rockets fly straight up into the atmosphere to conduct scientific experiments. They are too small to launch satellites.) The United States was followed by others. Between 1963 and 1975, more than 350 U.S., French, Soviet, and British sounding rockets were launched from India’s Thumba Range,[1] which the United States helped design. Thumba’s first group of Indian engineers had learned rocket launching and range operation in the United States.

Among them was the Agni’s chief designer, A. J. P. Abdul Kalam. In 1963-64, he spent four months in training in the United States. He visited NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, where the U.S. Scout rocket was conceived, and the Wallops Island Flight Center on the Virginia coast, where the Scout was being flown. The Scout was a low-cost, reliable satellite launcher that NASA had developed for orbiting small payloads.

Soon afterward, in 1965, the Indian government asked NASA how much it would cost and how long it would take to develop an Indian version of the Scout, and whether the United States would help. NASA replied that the Scout was “available . . . for purchase . . . in connection with scientific research,” but warned that “transfer of this technology . . . would be a matter for determination by the Department of State under Munitions Control.”[2] NASA nevertheless sent India technical reports on the Scout’s design, which was unclassified. India’s request should have raised some eyebrows: it came from Homi Bhabha, head of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission.

But Kalam had the information he needed. He returned to India and built the SLV-3 (Space Launch Vehicle), India’s first satellite launcher. Its design is virtually identical to the Scout’s. Both rockets are 23 meters long, use four similar solid-fuel stages and “open loop” guidance, and lift a 40-kilogram payload into low earth orbit. The SLV’s 30-foot first stage would later become the first stage of the Agni.

NASA officials say U.S. aid to India in rocketry was limited to the program in the 1960s. In 1988, however, the United States agreed to supply an advanced ring laser gyroscope to help guide a new Indian fighter plane.[3] It is not clear what will prevent India from using it to guide missiles. The highly accurate device is essentially solid state, making it easy to adapt to the demands of missile acceleration.

French lessons: liquid fuel

France also launched sounding rockets from India, and in the late 1960s allowed India to begin building “Centaure” sounding rockets under license from Sud Aviation. But France’s main contribution has been in the field of liquid propulsion. Under a license from France’s Societe Europeene de Propulsion (SEP), India is building its own version of the Viking high-thrust liquid rocket motor, used on the European Space Agency’s Ariane satellite launcher.[4] Indian engineers helped develop the Viking in the mid-1970s, then began a program of their own. India has now built an experimental model of the Viking engine, called the Vikas.

The training in liquid propulsion seems to have paid off. Just over a year before testing the Agni, Kalam tested a smaller predecessor, the “Prithvi” (earth), which uses a liquid-propelled motor to carry a one-ton payload 150 miles. It resembles the widely sold Soviet Scud-B. Indian sources say that the Agni’s second stage is a shortened version of the Prithvi.[5]

A German intensive tutorial

The aid of the United States and France, however, was quickly dwarfed by West German help in the 1970s and 1980s. Germany gave India help in three indispensable missile technologies: guidance, rocket testing, and the use of composite materials. All were supposed to be for the space program, but all were equally useful for military missiles.

The German government’s aerospace agency DLR (Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fur Luftfahrt und Raumfahrt e.V.) began tutoring India in rocket guidance in 1976.[6] The first step was to put a German interferometer on an Indian sounding rocket. An interferometer works by using antennas placed at different locations on the rocket to measure the phase of a radio signal received from the ground. The phase difference among the antennas reveals their relative positions on the rocket and thus the rocket’s attitude, which can be monitored and corrected from the ground. The first launch of an Indian rocket with a German interferometer was in 1978. By 1981 the project had been expanded to include an on-board DLR microprocessor. In April 1982, India tested its own version of the same interferometer.

The next step was to make a navigation system that did not depend on signals from the ground, one that could guide a payload through space by determining its position and speed at any moment. The “autonomous payload control system,” which India proposed in July 1981, would provide “full autonomous navigation capability to spaceborne sensors,” determining “position, velocity, attitude, and precision time in a real-time mode.” India would supply the rockets and satellites; Germany would provide the brains of the guidance system. The key component would be an on-board computer, using a microprocessor based on the Motorola family M 68000, and the software to run it.

It must be noted that an inertial navigation system that can guide satellites can also guide warheads. The United States used NASA’s experience in guiding the Titan II transtage, a “bus” designed for multiple satellite launchings, to develop a bus that would accurately deliver small nuclear warheads.[7]

The German-Indian plan was carried out. By January 1982, the two countries had agreed on a series of joint projects for the program. But at the same time, India announced that it was designing a new navigation system for its own space rockets: it would replace the “open loop” system used on its first launcher, the SLV-3, with a “closed loop” system for its Advanced Space Launch Vehicle and its Polar Space Launch Vehicle. An open loop system can only correct the rocket’s attitude, not deviations from the planned flight path. A closed loop system can correct both, because it senses and determines the rocket’s position in space. It amounts to an autonomous navigation system.

So while India’s program with Germany, called APC-Rex for Autonomous Payload Control Rocket Experiment, was developing autonomous navigation for a satellite, India would develop autonomous navigation for its own rockets. India would need a brain for its space rockets’ new closed loop system, which it would provide by developing the “Mark-II” onboard processor – “based on [the] Motorola 6800 microprocessor with 16-bit word length” – the same as that used in the German program. (Although Indian reports repeatedly refer to the Motorola “6800,” according to Motorola the 16-bit chip is the M 68000.) The timing of subsequent events showed continued parallel developments in the two programs.

The German aid in guidance is apparently continuing, despite the Agni launch. In May 1989, a DLR official said that “the APC-Rex program has not yet been concluded, but it will come to an end in 1989.”[8] West Germany was one of the seven countries that adopted the Missile Technology Control Regime in 1987, an agreement not to export items useful in making long-range missiles. That agreement barred the export of technology capable of real-time processing of navigation data, unless specific assurances could be given that the technology would not be used for, or transferred to, missile programs. If, as the evidence suggests, technology from APC-Rex has been used in India’s rocket and missile programs, Germany may have violated the agreement.

India has not described the Agni guidance system. But when the missile was assembled in 1988, Indian rocket scientists had studied and developed only one brain for rocket guidance: the German system based on the Motorola microprocessor and its software. Over a decade, Germany’s guidance tutorial helped India build and test a navigation package based on that system. Did that system go into the Agni, or did India invent from scratch some other system, not mentioned in any Indian space program report? If the latter, did the Indian rocket scientists block from their minds everything they had learned from the Germans? The evidence is strong that the Agni owes its brain to German engineering.

Interchangeable parts

The Indian space program first mentions the Agni in its 1982-83 annual report as a booster rocket for the Polar Space Launch Vehicle: six identical Agni boosters will lift the missile’s first stage. The boosters, in turn, are adaptations of the first stage of the SLV-3.[9] Indeed, the SLV-3 is the only large booster motor that India has: it carries nine tons of solid propellant, as does the Agni first stage; no other Indian booster carries anything close to that amount. India has used the same booster to lift the Advanced Space Launch Vehicle.[10] After the Agni launch a number of sources, Indian as well as foreign, reported that the Agni first stage was identical to the SLV-3 first stage. Thus, the main rocket for India’s missile program has come from India’s space program.

This same rocket, in turn, owes much to German help. Wind tunnels are essential to the design of any rocket. In 1974-75, DLR tested a model of the first stage of the SLV-3 in its wind tunnel at Cologne-Portz. DLR also helped India build rocket test facilities, furnishing a complete facility design and training Indian engineers in high-altitude testing. India has said it will use this technology to test the liquid-fueled upper stage of the Polar Space Launch Vehicle, and it may already have done so. India may also have used it to test the Agni’s liquid-fueled second stage, which must have been tested somewhere.

In June 1988, two Egyptian military officers were indicted for trying to smuggle carbon fiber composites out of the United States. Export of the composites was strictly controlled: the strong, lightweight, heat-resistant materials were being used for the nozzles and the nosecone of the MX, Trident, and Minuteman nuclear missiles.

But DAR began giving Indian scientists on-the-job training in composites at Stuttgart and Braunschweig in the mid-1970s. Subjects ranged from “glass fibre reinforced plastics via impregnated materials” to “carbon fibre reinforced composites.” The Indians learned “composition, manufacturing processes, quality control, and error detection.”

The German training allowed India to make rocket nozzles and nosecones of its own, which could be for either missiles or space launchers. To help the Indians use the composites, DAR supplied the documentation for a precision filament-winding machine, which India built and commissioned in 1985-86.

After the Agni test, Prime Minister Gandhi affirmed that one of the goals was to test “atmospheric reentry.” Lower-ranking officials were more specific. They said that the goal was to test a “domestically developed heat shield.”[11]

Target: China

No country, including India, has ever spent money on long-range rockets simply to explore space. The “satellites” launched by the SLV-3 were little more than flight monitors, used to transmit data on rocket performance, which was India’s true interest. To launch real satellites, India could and did hire other providers of that service. The Soviets launched India’s first two satellites; France’s Ariane rocket and the U.S. space shuttle have launched others.

Nor has any country developed long-range missiles simply to deliver conventional bombs. The large cost of missile development is only justified by the ability to inflict strategic blows, which conventional warheads cannot do.

The Agni, therefore, can only be interpreted as a step toward a long-range nuclear strike force. As India progresses in guidance, the Agni’s range should extend gradually to most targets in China.

India apparently has the material and skill to mass produce the Agni and arm it with nuclear warheads. The result will be a new nuclear equation in Asia. Across a common border, nuclear-armed rivals will confront each other, each with missiles, one or both vulnerable to a first strike from the other.

When India exploded an atomic bomb in 1974, the world was shocked. India had taken a Canadian reactor and U.S. heavy water both imported under guarantees of peaceful use and used them openly to make plutonium for a nuclear blast. That blast destroyed illusions about the “peaceful atom” and prompted changes in nuclear export policy. It is not surprising that India has again taken advantage of civilian imports and technology to further what appears to be a nuclear weapons program. What is surprising is that, given India’s record, it was so easy.

How a Satellite Guidance System Gets into a Missile

(Excerpts from program reports)

1982-83

APC-Rex (German-Indian missile program satellite guidance program): received Motorola 68000 microprocessor

Indian space and missile program: “An engineering model of the Mark-ll based on the Motorola 6800 [sic] has been integrated and exhaustive tests are being carried out.”

1983-84

APC-Rex (German-Indian missile program satellite guidance program): “Development of an on-board computer for autonomous payload control is in progress.”

Indian space and missile program: “Design review was conducted on inertial navigation systems with the participation of international experts.”

1984-85

APC-Rex (German-Indian missile program satellite guidance program): “Design of the on-board [guidance] packages was completed.”

Indian space and missile program: “Design of on-board processors for SLV based on 16-bit microprocessors has been completed.”

1986-87

APC-Rex (German-Indian missile program satellite guidance program): “Development and validation of hardware and software packages for APC-Rex are in their final stages.”

Indian space and missile program: “Breadboard models of on-board computers based on microprocessors have been realized.”

Footnotes

[1] P.D. Bhavsar et al., “Indian Sounding Rocket Program,” Proceedings of the 4th Sounding Rocket Technology Conference (Boston: American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics, June 23-26,1976), pp. 101-07.

[2] Letter from Arnold W. Frutkin, assistant administrator for international affairs, NASA, to Homi J. Bhabha, chairman, Indian Atomic Energy Commission, March 10, 1965.

[3] Steven R. Weisman, “U.S. Clears Vital Gyroscope for Indian Jet Fighter,” New York Times, April 7, 1988, p. A12.

[4] David Velupillai, “ISRO, India’s Ambitious Space Agency,” Flight International (June 28, 1980), p. 1466.

[5] “India’s Agni Success Poses New Problems,” Jane’s Defence Weekly (June 3,1989), p. 1052.

[6] Many of the following details of the German-Indian space program are found in the proceedings of a January 27, 1982, colloquium of the DAR (then called DFVLR) and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in Bangalore, India, “A Decade of Cooperation in the Field of Space Research and Technology,” and in annual reports of the Indian government’s Department of Space.

[7] Ted Greenwood, Qualitative Improvements in Offensive Strategic Arms: The Case of the MARV(Cambridge: Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Aug. 1973), p. 278.

[8] Letter from Dietmar Wurzel, head of DAR’s Washington, D.C., office, to Gary Milhollin, May 1, 1989.

[9] “India The Way Forward,” Spaceflight (Dec.1986), p. 434.

[10] “India Aims for Self-Sufficiency in Space,” Flight International (June 14,1986), p. 45.

[11] Barbara Crossette, “India Reports Successful Test of Mid-Range Missile,” New York Times, May 22, 1989, p. A9.

Testimony of Gary Milhollin

NEW REPUBLIC August 13, 1990, p. 10-11

The New York Times July 29, 1990, p. 19

The Washington Post July 22, 1990, p. C2

Testimony of Gary Milhollin

The Washington Post June 10, 1990, p. C1

The Washington Post April 1, 1990, p. C1

The New York Times March 25, 1990, Section 4, Page 19

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists November 1989, pp. 31-35

NEW REPUBLIC
August 13, 1990, p. 10-11

The New York Times
July 29, 1990, p. 19

The Washington Post
July 22, 1990, p. C2

The Washington Post
June 10, 1990, p. C1

The Washington Post
April 1, 1990, p. C1

The New York Times
March 25, 1990, Section 4, Page 19

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
November 1989, pp. 31-35