Thursday, November 08, 2007

More on Pakistan's Nuclear Arsenal...

...and its relative security, from today's Baltimore Sun. In the article, reporter David Wood repeats many of the points made in our post of two days ago. However, he does provide a brief discussion of the Passive Action Link (PAL) code device, installed on Pakistani nukes to prevent tampering with the weapons.

That's really no surprise; we have the same type of technology on our weapons, and so do the other nuclear powers, for that matter. The only problem, from what we're told, is that Pakistani PALs are far less tamper-proof that their U.S. counterparts, and as the Sun reports, Islamabad has not accepted technical advice on how to improve the devices.

Mr. Wood also notes that Pakistan has a special, 10,000-man security force to protect its nuclear arsenal. However, he doesn't quite connect all the dots, failing to note that concerns about Islamist infiltration--long a problem in Pakistan's intelligence services--also extend to the nuclear security forces.

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