Brought to you by the Center for Defense Information
1779 Massachusetts Ave., NW * Washington, DC 20036
(202)332-0600 * Fax (202)462-4559 * http://www.cdi.org
| April 16,1998 |
| April 16,1998 |
The All-Purpose Infantry Weapon
by Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.), Associate Director,
Center for Defense Information
dsmith@cdi.org
It's not a sleek, stealthy, high powered airplane that attacks out of nowhere or a small naval vessel that can strike targets hundreds of miles away. But in its own way the Army-Marine Corps Objective Individual Combat Weapon system - or OICW - is as revolutionary for the infantry "grunt" as these other systems are for the air and sea services.
It is also, in its own small way, another illustration of why military systems cost so much and defense contractors make such large profits.
The OICW system might be called a rifle. Well, not exactly. The weapon does fire a "standard" 5.56 millimeter rifle bullet. But that's only half the punch. With its attached laser rangefinder, video camera, and electronic fire control, the OICW can also launch a 20 millimeter high explosive projectile that can be programmed to detonate in the air over or along side of a target. This capability potentially would defeat traditional barriers against direct infantry weapon fire such as rocks, corners, and man-made frontal fortifications that do not have overhead protection.
Earlier this year two companies participated in a shoot-off of this new system - described by an Army Materiel Command spokesperson as "the only weapon of its kind in the world." On April 1 the Pentagon awarded an $8.5 million contract to Alliant Techsystems to develop the OICW as the 21st century replacement for the infantry's current M-16 rifle. For this amount of money the company will provide the Pentagon seven OICWs and sufficient ammunition to conduct test and evaluation trials under an accelerated Advanced Technology Demonstration program. If this is successful, the full scale engineering, manufacturing, and development (EMD) phase will begin in about two years. Costs for this phase are set at $43 million. Eventually, if all goes well, the Army and Marine Corps reportedly will buy 20,000 OICWs. At a cost of $10,000 each, this number of weapons will run $200 million.
So far so good.
Hardly had the ink been put to paper when the Pentagon said it wants an OICW that weighs less than 14 pounds, the target weight in the contract it just signed for seven test weapons and ammunition. As a former infantryman, I appreciate the desire to provide as light a weapon as possible for the foot soldier, particularly for the modern infantryman who will be weighed down as never before with high technology that links him (and eventually perhaps her) to everyone at every level and every place imaginable.
But it seems counterproductive to go into an Advanced Technology Demonstration with a weapon system that the services want to alter - even if the changes are made before EMD begins. Changing the weight of a weapon can and often does change balance, recoil, and other features that affect accuracy, which should raise questions about issuing a production contract for what, in effect, would be an unproven weapon. To go back and "prove" a changed weapon, on the other hand, will simply add to the cost and delay production and fielding - a lose-lose situation.
Independent of this weight change question is a chilling "vision" from Alliant Techsystems, the company that won the contract. Even before it delivers the first weapon to the Army for testing, Alliant is talking about foreign sales of the OICW. The Alliant spokesperson cited the success of the M-16 rifle and its many variants - it has been sold to 52 countries and has been licensed for production in four others - as a target to be met for foreign sales of the OICW.
What he didn't say is that among those 52 countries that received the M-16 are Grenada, Haiti, Lebanon, Panama, Somalia, and Vietnam, where U.S. forces eventually were in combat situations, and El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Kampuchea, Liberia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and Zaire, where thousands upon thousands of people have been killed both by the more than 7 million M-16s or the 70 million-plus AK-47s produced by the former Warsaw Pact and other nations.
As a former infantryman and a Vietnam veteran, I support giving the infantry the best weapon possible. But I don't support awarding contracts one week and then changing the specifications and costs the next. And I certainly oppose the virtual unrestricted sale of "the only weapon of its kind in the world."
Hanford - The Lingering Legacy of Nuclear Weapons Production
by Kate McGhee, Research Intern, Center for Defense Information
kmcghee@cdi.org
Earlier this month, the national conservation group, American Rivers, named a portion of the Columbia River in Washington state the most endangered river in North America. One of the principal threats to this stretch of river is nuclear waste contamination.
From 1942 until 1989 at Hanford, in southeast Washington state, the Department of Energy (DoE) and its predecessor agencies produced materials for nuclear weapons. The plutonium used in both the Trinity and Nagasaki atomic bombs was extracted at Hanford. DoE estimates that as much as 450 billion gallons of liquid waste were created during nuclear weapons production, making Hanford the site of the largest concentration of radioactive waste in the United States.
The New York Times (March 23 1998) said that about 900,000 gallons of radioactive waste has already leaked from Hanford into the soil. These leaks, along with intentional releases, have contaminated underground water moving toward the Columbia River, several miles from the core of the plant. Indeed, the groundwater under more than 85 square miles of the site is believed to be contaminated above current minimum water purification standards.
Fifty-four million gallons of the most radioactive and hazardous waste is currently stored in 177 underground tanks awaiting permanent disposal. The majority of these tanks - 149 - are single shell: i.e., they have only a single layer of carbon steel encased inside a concrete outer wall. The remainder are double shell. It is these single shell tanks which have been developing leaks. DoE estimates as many as 68 are currently leaking, but eventually all single shell tanks are expected to leak. Leaked materials include cesium, tritium, plutonium and uranium, some of which remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.
During the time when the Hanford site was in operation, DoE assumed that leaks from storage tanks did not pose any threat to the public or the environment. They believed that the area of dry soil above the water table, called the vadose zone, provided an effective barrier between tank waste and groundwater and claimed that it would be at least 10,000 years before waste reached groundwater. As a result no comprehensive study was conducted on the structure of the soil.
When evidence of the leaks was exposed, DoE was forced to acknowledge the problem and began developing a long-term strategy to deal with it. There are currently 14,000 employees monitoring and cleaning up the waste at Hanford. A report released last year by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) commented that "The Hanford high-level radioactive waste tanks are the single most complicated and expensive component in the Environmental Management program of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex." The current estimated cost of retrieving the waste from the tanks and disposing of it is $50 billion.
The General Accounting Office, Congress’ auditing agency, believes that a lack of research and knowledge about the vadose zone threatens to undermine DoE’s clean up strategy. Mistakes have been made already. For example, gravel was spread over the ground surface in an attempt to reduce the exposure to workers from the contaminated soil. But the gravel served only to increase the flow of rainwater though the contaminated dirt, moving the radioactive waste even faster toward the river. Experts say that without the gravel, water might have been absorbed by surface dirt or plants, allowing it to evaporate rather than filter through the soil.
DoE’s present long term plan includes using high pressure water hoses to sluice the wastes out of the tanks. But experts point out that if the tanks leak and the soil is permeable, such a procedure will only make matters worse.
Faith in DoE has certainly been shaken by its failure to study Hanford properly and apply lessons learned to other contaminated sites under DoE’s control. As Sen. John Glenn (D-OH) put it, "After all this inexcusable delay, continued failure to plan and implement an assessment program will raise serious questions about whether DoE should remain in charge of this program."
The Rwandan Bloodbath: Four Years Later
by Rachel Stohl, Research Analyst, Center for Defense Information
rstohl@cdi.org
As the world marks the fourth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, the people of Rwanda are calling for information regarding French involvement in the events of 1994. The killings began April 7, 1994, the day after the airplane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down by ground-to-air missiles launched by a still unidentified group as the plane approached Kigali for a landing. In the ensuing three months, an estimated 800,000 to 1,000,000 Rwandans were massacred.
One of the ongoing mysteries is the origin of the missiles that shot down the plane carrying the two presidents. France, which has been suspected of supplying weapons to the Hutus for several years, had been a leading candidate for the source of the missiles. The French, either through direct action or inaction, allowed weapons to continue to flow into Rwanda after the UN arms embargo was implemented. Human Rights Watch, which early on exposed the "French connection," reported that France sent arms first to Goma, Zaire, from whence they were moved across the border into Rwanda. Arms were also shipped to Rwanda after the embargo was in place by the British arms company Mil-Tec.
More recent reports state that the French supplied the missiles. According to Professor Filip Reyntjens of Antwerp University, sources in Western countries revealed that the two Soviet-made SAM-16 Gimlet missiles came from arms confiscated by French forces in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War.
The French, however, deny they supplied the missiles. Bernard Debre, a government minister whose responsibilities from November 1994 to May 1995 included African countries, alleges in a New York Times article that the missiles were in fact supplied by the United States. He contends the weapons "had come from stocks provided to Uganda by the United States after American troops seized the weapons from Iraq in the Gulf War in 1991." The State Department has "categorically denied" these allegations and says there is no evidence to support the claim that the missiles came from American or Ugandan stocks.
The mystery surrounding French involvement in Rwanda may soon be cleared up. On April 8, French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin took the first step to expose the facts about French involvement in the genocide in Rwanda. Jospin agreed to provide information on French military involvement in Rwanda to a parliamentary committee provided that government and military officials were allowed to testify "behind closed doors." Former French President François Mitterand’s son, Jean-Christophe, who served as his father’s African affairs advisor, as well as other high ranking officials of the time, will testify before the committee.
The accumulation of charges and counterchanges also has impelled the United Nations to reopen its investigation into whether arms sanctions to the region were ignored and what future steps can be taken to ensure peace in the region. At a minimum, nations involved in the Great Lakes region should release all records of their activities before and during the Rwandan genocide.
While these hearings may reveal much about the 1994 genocide and events leading to it, they will have no effect on present-day Rwanda which is plagued by violence and crime. Rwandan Hutu extremists continue to fight the Tutsi-dominated military. A series of violent incidents in February resulted in the deaths of 300 Hutus and eight soldiers. On April 3, seven civilians were killed when caught in the crossfire between militants and the army. Again, on April 8, another 26 civilians were killed when Hutu extremists armed with guns, machetes, and clubs attacked a village.
Stopping the violence will not be easy. Kenya’s President Daniel arap Moi has suggested that the Tutsis of Rwanda and Burundi live in a separate country from the Hutus. But sanctioning ethnic divisions is a slippery slope the international community should not encourage. Nor would such a division necessarily be the end of the problem. The real difficulty is the endless supply of weapons in the Great Lakes region which, in turn, fosters an attitude that violence is an acceptable solution in dealing with others.
Since the end of the three month rampage in 1994, more than 4,000 civilians have been killed in Rwanda alone. The continued flow of weapons to the region - primarily small arms - perpetuates an environment of fear and instability, destroys civil society, and forces the inhabitants to live with extreme violence and crime as part of their daily lives. Only when the international community becomes fully engaged in halting the flow of weapons and rebuilding the country will Rwandans have a chance for healing and peace.
Russia Could Ratify START II By Summer
by Andrew Koch, Senior Research Analyst, Center for Defense Information
akoch@cdi.org
Russian President Boris Yeltsin formally re-submitted the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty II (START II), along with amending protocols which modify it, to the lower house (the State Duma) of Russian parliament on Monday April 13, 1998. The U.S. Senate already has ratified the treaty which will lower the number of deployed nuclear weapons in each country to about 3,500 warheads. Last fall, the U.S. and Russia agree to the amending protocols which extend the deadline for when the reductions must be completed from the original date of January 1, 2003 to the end of 2007. Russia had sought the extension due to expected financial and technical difficulties associated with treaty compliance.
The Duma has been reluctant to approve new arms control agreements with the United States over the past few years, in part due to concerns over the expansion of NATO. United States congressional calls for America to break out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) and to deploy a large ballistic missile defense system have also raised serious concern in Moscow. The Duma is expected to link continued American compliance with the ABM treaty to Moscow’s adherence to START II.
Despite these concerns, the likelihood that the Duma will ratify START II is as high as it has been in recent years. Yeltsin has thrown his substantial political weight behind the treaty, saying that it "corresponds to the interests of Russia." He also enlisted the help of Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov and Acting Defense Minister Igor Sereyev to guide START II through the ratification process.
The treaty enjoys powerful support in the Duma as well. Although START II ratification will not be taken up until a vote on the newly appointed choice for Prime Minister, Sergei Kiriyenko, is completed, Duma Speaker and Communist party member Gennady Seleznyov said that he will support both Kiriyenko’s nomination and START II ratification. Vladimir Lukin, the powerful Chairman of the Duma’s Committee for International Relations, has also expressed his support for the treaty and hopes ratification will occur before the Duma adjourns for summer recess.
Duma members will be hard-pressed not to agree to the pact. As with Russian conventional units, Moscow’s nuclear forces are deteriorating and many aging systems will have to be retired within the next few years. Moscow cannot afford to build new ones and budgetary constraints will dictate a significantly smaller arsenal than at present, whether or not this is codified by a formal treaty with the United States.
Given that outlook, Duma members may well seek to reap what benefit they can from the situation, namely "locking" the U.S. nuclear arsenal into significantly lower numbers.
NATO Expansion Under Scrutiny
by Tomas Valasek, Research Analyst, Center for Defense Information
tvalasek@cdi.org
In late April or early May, the U.S. Senate is expected to vote on NATO expansion. The approaching vote presents an opportunity to take a good look at the main pros and cons of the plan to expand the alliance.
Benefits of NATO expansion:
Costs of NATO expansion:
Should the Senate and other NATO legislatures approve the expansion, the Alliance ought to take a number of practical steps that better reflect what will be the new European security situation. NATO’s revised Strategic Concept, due in April 1999, should downgrade the emphasis on territorial defense. NATO needs functioning tools for dealing with intraalliance conflicts, the likelihood of which will only increase as more countries join. Lastly, NATO should formalize its relations with the United Nations, the OSCE, and the WEU. Agreements that divide duties and responsibilities would enable quicker crisis response and allow each of these organizations to use their unique abilities to their fullest instead of finding themselves conflicting with or deferring to each other - as happened in Bosnia and Albania.
Center for Defense Information Senior Analyst Andrew Koch has authored a recently released report detailing the size and scope of Iran's nuclear weapons development program. For more information, contact Andrew Koch at akoch@cdi.org or view the report at http//cns.miis.edu/pubs/other/iranrpt.pdf.