August 2009 Archives

In June, US President Obama announced at Cairo University in Egypt a proposal to develop scientific and technological partnerships with Muslim countries.

At the recent meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology held in Washington, DC, White House science adviser John Holdren confirmed that the administration is actively working to develop such plans.

State help

The program will be run by the National Security Council (NSC) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) as an interagency project, with strong support from the US State Department and US Agency for International Development.

"Obviously everyone is paying attention to [this issue] as it's the President's wish," said a source at the State Department. "And we're very enthusiastic that science and technology are taking such a central role in the President's diplomacy efforts," he adds.

Although it is hard to pin down the exact number of scientists working overseas for the State Department, nearly every US embassy has at least one or two officers devoted to science and technology, environment and health issues. The larger embassies, such as in Paris, Tokyo, and Moscow have a small staff of senior and junior foreign service officers, and local contractors working on S&T issues. In addition, agencies such as the Department of Energy, NASA, and NSF will have experts assigned to countries that they work closely with, such as France, Mexico, Japan, and China.

Among the career foreign service, few have a science or engineering background, although this situation has been improving in the last few years, said the State Department source. "Recruitment is more robust and starting to build back capacity that was lost during the last twenty years," he says.

The proposal

Obama's June proposal suggested appointing regional science envoys and a new fund to encourage and support technological and research centers in developing countries in Africa, the Middle East, and southeast Asia.

The first of these proposals is gaining traction, says the US State Department source, who is helping NSC and OSTP create a list of candidates for the proposed science envoy positions. "These will include distinguished scientists in their field, such as National Medal of Science winners," he says.

These envoy trips will be similar to existing programs run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences, which send experts abroad to build and strengthen research links. The main difference will be in the length of the trips abroad—envoys will be expected to take trips lasting several weeks—and the high level of support and trust the administration will put behind the envoys in arranging bilateral deals.

In this regard, the OSTP, working with the State Department, has asked US embassies to identify themes of mutual interest, such as the environment and professional development, and collate existing links with research centers abroad.

The first appointment of a science envoy is expected in the coming weeks, according to the OSTP.

Paul Guinnessy

The Pentagon is signaling to Russia that plans for an extensive European missile defense system (EMDS) could be scaled back.

The original EMDS proposal was to use interceptors similar to those based in Alaska, with a X-band tracking radar located in the Czech Republic and the interceptors based in Poland. The EMDS would protect Europe and the US from missiles launched in the Middle East by destroying them mid-flight.

However Russia objected to the EMDS sites accusing the US of attempting to weaken their security and trying to gain influence in a region that they see as under Russian geo-political influence.

To limit these concerns, and after a new Pentagon analysis suggests the likelihood that the US will face an intercontinental missile threat is a lot weaker than previously believed, the US military is recommending that a land-based SM-3 system be deployed instead says Aviation Week.

The SM-3 can, in theory, destroy mid-range missiles aimed at Europe, but not long-range intercontinental missiles aimed at the US, either from the Middle East or launched from Russia. The SM-3 would still make use of a radar station in the Czech Republic.

"The reality is [long-range intercontinental missiles] did not come as fast as we thought it'd come," said General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking at a missile-defence conference in Alabama last week.

The Pentagon is currently in the midst of a major review of all its missile defense programs and a number of exotic technologies, such as the Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV) are likely to be canceled.

The SM-3 is also seen as cheaper, more reliable system than the original EMDS, and the existing interceptors based in Alaska and at Vandenberg air force base in California should be able to deal with any accidential launches from North Korea.

Paul Guinnessy

As the US nuclear weapons budget has plunged over the past decade, the nation's three weapons laboratories are determined to hold onto a program that they say is now their only source of support dedicated to high-risk research that could have big payoffs. The laboratory-directed research and development program (LDRD) enables the labs to spend 8% of the funding provided by the Department of Energy's weapons and nonproliferation programs for R&D projects of the individual labs' choosing.

"LDRD enables us to conduct high-risk, potentially high-value research in areas that are foundational to national security," said J. Stephen Rottler, vice president for science, technology, and engineering at Sandia National Laboratories, one of the weapons labs. In addition to providing solutions to nuclear weapons and other national security problems, LDRD has helped to prevent technological surprises, Rottler told a Washington, DC, conference on 19 August.

As recently as the early 1990s, DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) included programmatic funding for high-risk basic research in such areas as materials science, Rottler said. But now, the $166 million in LDRD that Sandia will receive in fiscal year 2010 will be the sole source of support NNSA will provide for such basic research.

LDRD projects are competitively selected from proposals submitted by lab staff. Typically, projects involve a few investigators and receive about $450 000 over one to two years. After that, investigators are expected to look to other sponsors for support--whether from NNSA, other DOE programs, or from private industry.

As the labs turn to other federal sponsors to make up for a steady decline in NNSA business, LDRD has become ever more critical in helping the labs attract new scientific talent to their ranks. Unlike NNSA, sponsoring agencies such as the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security pay only for the direct costs of the R&D the labs perform for them; the costs of maintaining the scientific and technical infrastructure fall to NNSA alone. Today, 60% of Sandia's $2.2 billion operating budget comes from non-NNSA sources, Rottler said; not so long ago, 75% came from the DOE nuclear weapons program.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently asked for help from the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in making the case for revitalizing the labs. Until 1998-- Chu told PCAST on 6 August--Sandia, Lawrence Livermore, and Los Alamos national labs had been "on a 10-year glide path" to halving their NNSA-funded research programs (see "Science key to nuclear labs future says Chu"). While that decline was halted in its eighth year, the NNSA budget hasn't moved upward. At such low levels, Chu said, the labs are "in a bit of a bind" in their efforts to recruit young scientists to work on interesting science.

David Kramer

In the first public meeting of the President’s Council of Advisers in Science and Technology (PCAST), US Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the loss of basic science and technology funding at the nuclear-weapons labs Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore have had an inverse effect in the labs ability to attract "the best and the brightest."

During the 1990s the labs basic research funding was on an “10-year-glide-path” to be cut in half he said, which was only stopped in 1998. "To be blunt," said Chu, "the best and the brightest didn’t want to be weapons designers...they wanted to do good science."

Chu pointed out that this model—of using basic science as the carrot which would eventually lead to an interest in more applied work—has been common at all the major innovation incubators such as the Bell Laboratories or in the weapons labs early history.

How to attract high caliber staff to the weapons labs in the current climate “is an unsolved problem” said Chu, who asked for PCAST to assess ways to attract the best staff to DOE. In the meeting Chu implied that there is currently a review underway of the nuclear weapons management structure.

Chu also expanded on the principles behind his request to Congress to fund centers of excellence in energy research in which DOE would act more like a venture capitalist fund and invest in people, not in individual projects. "In World War II you just picked out outstanding people and gave them a problem and told them to solve it," he said. "They treated problems as triage. You would tackle the hard problem first and move onto the next if it didn't work." A similar attitude needs to exist in energy research he said.

"The key would be the management team and whether they are willing to take on this task," he said. "There are a couple of experiments I want to do in this regard."

Paul Guinnessy

President Obama has announced which US companies have been awarded Department of Energy stimulus money grants to build manufacturing plants for electric vehicles and batteries.

The announcement, made in Elkhart, Indiana, marks the single largest investment in advanced battery technology for hybrid and electric-drive vehicles ever made and could cut the cost of batteries for US-produced hybrid cars by 40%.

"If we want to reduce our dependence on oil, put Americans back to work and reassert our manufacturing sector as one of the greatest in the world, we must produce the advanced, efficient vehicles of the future," said President Obama.

Industry officials expect that this $2.4 billion investment in 25 states, coupled with another $2.4 billion in cost share from the 48 award winners, will result directly in the creation tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs.

"These are incredibly effective investments that will come back to us many times over—by creating jobs, reducing our dependence on foreign oil, cleaning up the air we breathe, and combating climate change," said US Energy Secretary Steven Chu at an event in Charlotte, North Carolina. "They will help achieve the President's goal of putting one million plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road by 2015. And, most importantly, they will launch an advanced battery industry in America and make our auto industry cleaner and more competitive."

The new awards are split into three separate programs:

Of the 48 funded projects, 18 worth more than $1 billion will be based in Michigan, which has been hard hit by the recession. Two companies, A123 (for lithium-ion battery packs) and Johnson Controls (for nickel-cobalt battery cells and packs), will receive more than $550 million to establish a manufacturing base in the state for advanced batteries, and two others, Compact Power and Dow Kokam, will receive a total of over $300 million for manufacturing battery cells and materials that will be used by the Chevrolet Volt electric car. The DOE placed an order for 600 Chevy Volts for testing purposes as part of the testing program.

Large automakers based in Michigan, including GM, Chrysler, and Ford, will receive a total of more than $400 million to manufacture thousands of advanced hybrid and electric vehicles as well as batteries and electric drive components. And three Michigan Universities — the University of Michigan, Wayne State University in Detroit, and Michigan Technological University in Houghton in the Upper Peninsula — will share $10 million for education and workforce training programs.

In Indiana, EnerDel received $118.5 million to expand lithium ion battery manufacturing in order to supply the electric car companies Fisker Automotive and Norway's Think. Saft America will receive $95.5 million to produce lithium ion cells and batteries for industrial, agricultural, and defense vehicles.

Although no Japanese or European car comapny benefited directly from the stimulus funds, Nissan, which earlier this week announced an all-electric car called "Leaf" will indirectly benefit, as DOE will invest $100 million in eTec's and Nissan's charging stations to see how reliable they work with Leaf and other electric vehicles.

Paul Guinnessy

Two former Department of Defense officials from the recent Bush administration—Eric Edelman and Henry Obering—had an opinion piece for the Washington Post last month in which they discussed the Iranian missile threat.

The opinion piece called into question a recent US-Russian joint threat assessment of Iran by the EastWest Institute that included Richard L. Garwin and Theodore A. Postol among their contributors and argued for the rush deployment of a missile defense system in Europe based on the interceptors currently deployed in Alaska.

Although the Washington Post published a letter from Garwin, in which he says missile defense should be held to the same deployment standards of any other weapons system, a longer letter by Garwin and Postol wrote has been circulating on the internet (see below).

Paul Guinnessy

The Wrong Defense and the Wrong Target
by
Richard L. Garwin and Theodore A. Postol
July 8, 2009

Trey Obering and Eric Edelman misrepresent the findings of an East-West Institute study done by a team of Russian and US experts on Iran's Nuclear and Ballistic Missile Programs and then use these misrepresentations to make arguments that are without merit. They claim that a recently tested Iranian solid propellant ballistic missile represents a threat to Europe ("putting much of Europe within range") and imply that the Czech radar and Polish interceptors can counter it when in fact the missile is of too short a range to reach most European capitals and even to be engaged by the European missile defense system they advocate.

They also claim that our report incorrectly identifies and discusses serious limitations of the European Midcourse Radar that Gen. Obering was involved in advocating for the Czech Republic when he was director of the Missile Defense Agency. Our study found that the range of this radar against warheads is so short that it cannot provide even rudimentary discrimination capabilities against warheads and decoys launched from Iran to the eastern two thirds of the continental United States and Northern and Western Europe.

Obering and Edelman state that the radar "has been operated in flight tests in the South Pacific for more than eight years." What they do not say is that the radar was of such short range that it could only be tested against realistic mock warheads at ranges of a few hundred kilometers, where the actual intercept attempts occurred after long-range missiles had already flown thousands of miles to arrive near the radar.

We have recommended to the National Security Adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, that the real capabilities of this radar get high-level technical attention in the president's Missile Defense Review. If this radar does not have the range to discriminate between warheads and decoys, it will mean that the Missile Defense Agency has committed to a radar that would leave two thirds of the eastern part of the continental United States, as well as Northern and Western Europe, with a defense that cannot tell the difference between warheads and countermeasures so simple that it is impossible to believe they would not, and could not, be used.

The other findings of the East-West Institute Study are also relevant to Obering's and Edelman's claims of a dire threat from Iran that requires the immediate adoption of a flawed and untested missile defense system. They are:

Unlike the European missile defense, this defense is not subject to countermeasures. We like it, because we like weapons that work!

Richard L. Garwin is a long-time contributor to U.S. military technology.

Theodore A. Postol is Professor of Science, Technology, and national Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.