No More Nukes? Talk to Pakistan: The geopolitical preconditions for the global nuclear disarmament are so unlikely that policy-makers must assume nukes will remain part of the strategic calculus, according to former National Nuclear Security Administration Secretary Linton Brooks. For states like China, Pakistan, and Russia, nuclear weapons are the best way to offset a numeric or technological disadvantage. “The Russian Federation is going to be conventionally inferior” for the foreseeable future and still views “the US and NATO as enemies” according to the Kremlin’s most recent doctrine, Brooks noted at the British-American Security Information Council sponsored event Nov. 13. “States have nuclear weapons because they think it enhances their security,” he stated. “Pakistan will always be next door to a country that is four times its size and that has pretty consistently beaten it in conventional battles.” Unless problems like this for states like China, Russia, Pakistan, and Israel are simultaneously resolved and “stay solved long enough for us to devise a verifiable regime,” then global “nuclear zero” is impossible, he emphasized. “That’s a transformation of the international system that is pretty close to world-government and I am with President Obama [that it won’t happen]—not in my lifetime,” concluded Brooks.
The Air Force and Boeing agreed to a nearly $2.4 billion contract for a new lot of KC-46 aerial tankers on Nov. 21. The deal, announced by the Pentagon, is for 15 new aircraft in Lot 11 at a cost of $2.389 billion—some $159 million per tail.