Pentagon – Russian Subs Near US Coast Pose No Threat

Russian submarines patrolling off the US east coast are not cause for concern and pose no threat to the United States, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

“So long as they are operating in international waters as, frankly, we do around the world — and are behaving in a responsible way, they are certainly free to do so and it doesn’t cause any alarm within this building,” press secretary Geoff Morrell said at a Pentagon news conference.

US Northern Command issued a brief statement earlier that it was monitoring the submarines, which Morrell said were several hundred miles (kilometers) off the eastern coastline.

Morrell said he was unsure if Moscow gave Washington advance notice but the US military “had the means to derive where they were going.”

Morrell played down the episode, saying: “While it is interesting and noteworthy that they are in this part of the world, it doesn’t pose any threat and it doesn’t cause any concern.”

He acknowledged that US submarines have operated off the Russian coast “from time to time” as well, in international waters.

The New York Times first reported the presence of two Russian nuclear-powered, Akula class submarines off the American coast, the first such move in years that carried echoes of Cold War tensions.

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Russian Subs Patrolling Off East Coast of U.S.

A pair of nuclear-powered Russian attack submarines has been patrolling off the eastern seaboard of the United States in recent days, a rare mission that has raised concerns inside the Pentagon and intelligence agencies about a more assertive stance by the Russian military.

The episode has echoes of the cold war era, when the United States and the Soviet Union regularly parked submarines off each other’s coasts to steal military secrets, track the movements of their underwater fleets and be poised for war.

But the collapse of the Soviet Union all but eliminated the ability of the Russian Navy to operate far from home ports, making the current submarine patrols thousands of miles from Russia more surprising for military officials and defense policy experts.

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According to Defense Department officials, one of the Russian submarines remained in international waters on Tuesday about 200 miles off the coast of the United States. The location of the second remained unclear. One senior official said the second submarine traveled south in recent days toward Cuba, while another senior official with access to reports on the surveillance mission said it had sailed away in a northerly direction.

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3 Held Over Radioactive Material

The three men were arrested in the western Ternopil region last Thursday when they tried to sell a container of radioactive material for $10m, the SBU said in a statement.

The men – identified as a member of the Ternopil regional parliament and two businessmen – believed they were selling 3 672kg of radioactive plutonium-239, the statement said.

The material “could have been used for terrorist purposes for the creation of a dirty bomb”, the SBU said, referring to a kind of weapon combining radioactive material with conventional explosives.

Authorities were seeking to determine what substance was in the container, but the SBU said its radioactivity level was 250 times greater than normal background radiation.

The SBU said the substance had been produced on Russian territory in the Soviet era and could have been transferred to Ukraine from a neighbouring state, without providing further details.

The men have been charged with illegal handling of radioactive material and face from eight to 15 years in prison.

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EMP Threat – A Single Nuke Could Destroy America

A sword of Damocles hangs over our heads. It is a real threat that has been all but ignored.

On Feb. 3, Iran launched a “communications satellite” into orbit. At this very moment, North Korea is threatening to do the same. The ability to launch an alleged communications satellite belies a far more frightening truth. A rocket that can carry a satellite into orbit also can drop a nuclear warhead over any location on the planet in less than 45 minutes.

Far too many timid or uninformed sources maintain that a single launch of a missile poses no true threat to the United States, given our retaliatory power.

A reality check is in order and must be discussed in response to such an absurd claim: In fact, one small nuclear weapon, delivered by an ICBM can destroy the United States by maximizing the effect of the resultant electromagnetic pulse upon detonation.

An electromagnetic pulse EMP is a byproduct of detonating an atomic bomb above the Earth’s atmosphere. When a nuclear weapon is detonated in space, the gamma rays emitted trigger a massive electrical disturbance in the upper atmosphere. Moving at the speed of light, this overload will short out all electrical equipment, power grids and delicate electronics on the Earth’s surface. In fact, it would take only one to three weapons exploding above the continental United States to wipe out our entire grid and transportation network. It might take years to recover from, if ever.

This is not science fiction. If you doubt this, spend a short amount of time skimming the Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack from April 2008. You will come away sobered.

Even as the new administration plans to spend trillions on economic bailouts, it has announced plans to reduce funding and downgrade efforts for missile defense. Furthermore, the United States’ reluctance to invest in a modern and credible traditional nuclear deterrent is a serious concern. What good will a bailout be if there is no longer a nation to bail out?

Fifty years ago, it was not Sputnik itself that sent a dire chill of warning around the world; it was the capability of the rocket that launched Sputnik. The rocket that lofted Sputnik into orbit also could have served as an ICBM.

Yet for all its rhetoric, the Soviet Union was essentially a rational power that recognized the threat of mutual destruction and thus never stepped to the edge.

The world is different today. Intercontinental range missiles tipped with nuclear weapons in the hands of leaders driven by fanaticism, leaders that support global terrorism, leaders that have made repeated threats that they will seek our annihilation . . . can now at last achieve that dream in a matter of minutes.

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