Washington, Jan. 14 (CNA) The Pentagon recently discovered that the developing anti-US alliance between Russia and Communist China has expanded to a new area of alarming secret cooperation -- nuclear weapons, with Russian nuclear weapons experts assisting Beijing with "tritium extraction" for thermonuclear warheads, Bill Gertz wrote in The Washington Times Friday.
Gertz wrote that the National Security Agency obtained an electronic intercept in November on the secret Russian-PRC cooperation and passed it on to senior US officials in a top-secret report.
Officials told Gertz that Beijing's interest in extracting tritium, a gas used to boost the explosive power of nuclear warheads, is probably linked to the development of newer and smaller warheads by the People's Liberation Army.
Gertz pointed out that the intercept calls into question the rationale behind the Pentagon's multimillion-dollar "threat reduction" program designed to prevent just such cooperation. Pentagon spokesmen however have insisted that sending cash to pay Russian weapons scientists not to sell their expertise abroad is money spent protecting US interests.
In addition to the nuclear weapons cooperation, Gertz said, Russian technicians are also helping China's military build cruise missiles. Moscow has also sold Beijing advanced SU-27 and SU-30 fighter jets and Sovremenny-class naval destroyers equipped with high-speed SS-N-22 Sunburn anti-ship missiles. (By Nelson Chung)
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
