The Pentagon has set up a special unit to conduct forensic tests in the event of a nuclear attack on the US, with the aim of identifying attackers for possible retaliation, a Pentagon official said on Thursday.
Major Susan Idziak, a defense department spokeswoman, said the unit was called the domestic nuclear event attribution program. It is made up of nuclear experts equipped with specialist robots for collecting and analyzing fallout at ground zero of any future attack involving a nuclear device or dirty bomb, that disperse radioactive material by using conventional explosives.
The program is principally intended as a contingency in the case of an attack on the US, but the team of experts and specialist robots could also be dispatched abroad in the event of an attack on a US ally.
Whatever the target, it would seek to identify isotopes in the fallout in an attempt to establish the particular "signature" of the radioactive material.
The unit's existence was first reported yesterday in the New York Times, which said the program was established by a secret presidential directive, "National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction," signed in September 2002.
Idziak, a spokeswoman for the defense threat reduction agency -- a specialist unit within the Pentagon that oversees the forensic team -- did not provide details of the directive but confirmed the existence and purpose of the program.
The program has dusted off and improved cold war technology for analyzing radioactive fallout. During the cold war, however, the task of identifying an attacker was made easier by the fact that nuclear warheads were mostly mounted on missiles with an identifiable launch point. In the era of the war on terrorism, a nuclear device or dirty bomb is much more likely to be smuggled to its target.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
Four contenders are squaring up to succeed Antonio Guterres as secretary-general of the UN, which faces unprecedented global instability, wars and its own crushing budget crisis. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan and Senegal’s Macky Sall are each to face grillings by 193 member states and non-governmental organizations for three hours today and tomorrow. It is only the second time the UN has held a public question-and-answer, a format created in 2016 to boost transparency. Ultimately the five permanent members of the UN’s top body, the Security Council, hold the power, wielding vetoes over who leads the
A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record in a show of China’s technological leaps. The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, completed the 21km race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, said a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, where the race began. That was faster than the human world record holder, Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo, who finished the same distance in about 57 minutes in March at the Lisbon road race. The performance by the robot marked a significant step forward
RSS