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Tom Moore, Nuclear-Capable Wonk Profile picture
Tom Moore, Nuclear-Capable Wonk
@PaperMissiles
Ex-Senior Professional Staff Member, US Senate Foreign Relations Committee|#nuclear policy expert|Mercurially acerbic #Jayhawk who'd rather be reading Bulgakov.
Sep 1 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
A good case for123 agreements with Russia and China. Hint: There isn’t one. Welcome to real competition signaling: Terminate them both, boost loadings on TIID5 at max yield per each a 8 warheads, fund and deploy SLCMs, accelerate Sentinel and fund real pit prod./1 End START notifications. They have no/no value. Say nothing of suspension, termination or withdrawal. Call out everything in Belarus then approach Poland for land- and sea-based joint basing and nuclear force deployments. Let Moscow guess, matching silence with silence./2
Aug 16, 2023 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
Okay, what exactly Duda said about joint control over Russian nuclear weapons is a bit unclear. I have no idea what he meant about it not being solely up to Putin. I do know we have seen A LOT of shoddy speculation that Russians wouldn't obey the order to use nukes. Starting to feel shades of an old Arbatov article combine with legends about what Schlesinger did or did not do when Nixon was non compos mentis. So let me be clear: I agree the threat of use is low. But I don't agree that the Verkhovnyy Glavnokomanduyushchiy would be ignored.
Jan 24, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I think it's obligatory for nearly every single French or German I respect to wince in apprehension when Americans drone on into alliance-speak about NATO and peace. But. Alliance management is an art, and it's never done well since it dwells mainly on what it deters. Daily, weekly, perhaps even hourly, a sickening feeling I always had when in Brussels was that, one way or another, I was being politely ignored or completely insulted. In my last jaunt, I even cut a meeting short, declaring it to be close to Christmas, but really feeling bitter.
Jan 22, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It would have looked different, but ultimately it was precisely because we did nothing during the buildup to 1M Russians on the ready to invade that he did invade. It's a hard counterfactual precisely because it dwells in what did not happen and what Putin would have not done. It really does boil down to what that ultimately correct man, Brzezinski, wrote: "It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire." Jewel in the crown is...
Jan 22, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
"[I]n God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old."

If Germany stifles the righteous on land, then we will rise to the air, give Kyiv wings, and, finally, when ATACMs have been provided, see this war end.
Dec 17, 2022 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
The complete extent of the Russian state's interdependence on organized crime is a closely held secret in both Russia and in the US. Putin's own Petersburg past is largely in the open, and reveals the extent to which he used his position to cultivate, as he was trained, assets. Many people have tended to aggregate or disaggregate the necessity of criminality from the times in which Putin found himself, but whether dismissive or pruriently interested, both camps have largely had to speculate in the open on whether this linkage matters for foreign policy.
Dec 14, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The president proposes; Congress authorizes and appropriates. And that budget category (050) is not what’s driving spending up, overall./1 “The Congressional Budget Office periodically issues a compendium of budget options to help inform federal lawmakers about the implications of possible policy choices that would reduce the deficit.” Where does defense rank?/2
Dec 4, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
After the hype, let's see. USAF faces some large issues that the big talk about B-21 won't fix. I mean, new equipment on the runway makes for good press, but our concept of the future of air war...isn't all that different in substance from the first 50 years of air warfare. We have long loitered in the the future of the perfect air force. Pulled out the better (and admittedly easier) treatment that Olsen (ed.) gave the matter in A History of Air Warfare. Dove deeper with some early work by a number of our best, earlier air strategists.
Nov 2, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
I really preferred the Soviet version of these talkers.
They were nearly identical. Notice how the issue itself is used as a matter of grievance politics, not just high-minded ideals (well-dressed cant).
Oct 25, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
We have information that you are lying.
About everything. Image How much money does your president have?
How many times did you assist Syria in using WMD?
How many people have you assassinated using exotic WMD?
How many people who have criticized Putin have fallen down the stairs or out a window?
How many Ukrainian children have you abducted?
Oct 25, 2022 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
Years ago, and well before @desmondbutler published this, I had a theory that was too wild to share. /1 apnews.com/article/9f77a1… I had thought a lot about the combination of a terrorist use of stolen nuclear material in a dirty device, stolen from a third party and used on a target as an act of state-level provocation to justify a war or intervention, or even nuclear use./2
Sep 27, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
As my friend @ArmsControlWonk once said, reassurance is something you give yourself. The test, if they did one, would be to demonstrate the power of Russian nuclear intimidation, break the CTBT and achieve no objective outside Russia. When Trenin is nominally right of... ...the boss, the boss might just need to demonstrate he has the muzhestvennost' to show the world that Moscow has the ability to do its worst, only to show the baying Zwastika horde that Russia is not in any corner a few good ionizing detonations over NZ can't fix.
Sep 11, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
I am not buying that the Russian General Staff is fighting with other parts of the Russian interagency over the war. I would buy that SVR had doubts, and both are united in presenting a different picture than Putin wants or will accept. But neither is independently powerful./1 The GenShtab has what you can best call a recurring role in the cast of Russian interagency history, sometimes not even existing, and sometimes while existing barely registering. SVR on the other hand has a more clouded power role viz. GRU, despite what's on an org. chart./2
Sep 10, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Ah the once-in-a-century-or-so joy Jewish people must feel when a protestant monarch sits on St Edward's Chair, in which resides the Stone of Destiny, stolen from the Catholic Scone Abbey, is crowed to the tune of +Zadok the priest+ by a Lutheran, Handel.
Christianity is not for the ahistorical lot.
Sep 8, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
When Elizabeth I died in 1604, it was often remarked that her life had been "a far greater part of a man's age," and many had never heard in their entire lives of a "king of England."

PM Truss wasn't even born when Elizabeth II became Queen and Winston Churchill was the PM. A.L. Rowse noted in his The England of Elizabeth the Tudor monarch's response to a parliamentary delegation on the matter of her marriage, or lack thereof, and concerns about the succession. Elizabeth I's reply has never ceased to strike me with respect and awe:
Aug 20, 2022 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
The United States doesn't covertly deploy short-range ATACMs in Ukraine. We have Twitter to do that for us. A big part of the interagency fight in the US has been over what to do once launchers where there that could launch a few things other than GMLRS. Plain unclassified fact is that from a certain angle, there could be images of things, perhaps made elsewhere, near or on launchers.
Aug 12, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
All data controlled under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, as Restricted Data includes information concerning:
-design, manufacture, or use of atomic weapons;
-production of special nuclear material; and
-use of special nuclear material in the production of energy. It is a criminal offense to obtain, store unlawfully or fail to protect any RD. It is an offense to share RD with anyone not cleared to have it. It is a criminal offense to fail to protect RD from unwarranted disclosure/release that would damage the national security of the USA.
Aug 11, 2022 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Both before and after this war, and before and after Putin, Russia will have a government that is populated with our enemies, forces replete with nuclear weapons and a nation that wonders just what the hell they are supposed to do, now./1 Most average Russians are terrified of their government, which is the way it wants things, but some Russians are not evil nor greedy. They are also ready to do what's right, but simply doubt they can survive it. And do what? Protest? Write? And write to whom or for whom?/2
Aug 10, 2022 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
The net impact of suspending flights and inspections under New START is actually only a minor matter, but a negative one, in the entire context of US-Russian relations. Russia is not poised to breakout rapidly from 1,550 deployed warheads, and if they do, we will see it happen./1 Russia does have and will grow an aggregate throw weight as more Sarmats and other missiles deploy. What we won't have (and frankly lack anyway) is high confidence in what they actually deploy above and below START Article II limits of +warheads.+ Counting missiles is useless./2
Aug 8, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I’ve seen the report that only 30 percent of US equipment “makes it to the front” in Ukraine. Knowing a bit about end use monitoring, I did some digging. Russia doesn’t have to compromise or penetrate media—reporters can be easily manipulated by a report or numbers./1 Most people will not understand transshipment of arms. But in this war, a lot changes even how our EUM works in theater. But expend rates have been consistent with high demand, low density weapons and support. We also may count things that make a number seem low./2
Jul 28, 2022 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
If you haven’t noticed, Russia’s very clear decision to violate and effectively to terminate the INF treaty has resulted in zero advantages for it and its being surrounded by more land-based forces approaching INF ranges. You can argue, as some do and will, proves it didn’t./1 If we take Lavrov’s 2008 talkers on multilateralizing it for true, Russia now faces several China problems, no credibility in arms control (thus no chance of recourse to it), and clear technical and operational limits in seeing any advantage from land. SLCMs were never banned./2