👇 Here's a weird piece of nuclear news:

A new Air Force environmental assessment reveals that it considered basing its next generation of ICBMs in underground railway tunnels––or possibly underwater. 👀
fas.org/blogs/security… Below is a screenshot from the Air Force's July 2022 draft Environmental Impact Statement for the ICBM replacement program.

As you can see, it includes two alternate basing options: "Underground Tunnel Systems" and "Deep-Lake Silos."

ranking the top 10 images from the indian government's annual cruise missile calendar 👇 (yes, this exists) #10––Sept/Oct 2009

pictures are meh, but captions are excellent. "accept the challenges so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory" sounds sort of like a bad half-time pep talk. 1/5 stars

found something big with the satellites, time to dust off the ole twitter fingers who is ready for some China Content™️

🚨 In the middle of a pandemic, Canada is buying armed drones.

By the government's own admission, these drones will be used to surveil domestic protests and bomb targets in the Middle East.

This should concern everyone.

See my latest for @readpassage 🧵
readpassage.com/canada-is-buyi… How do we know that Canada's drones will be used for these missions?

In its "Letter of Interest" to industry suppliers, the government lays out several scenarios under which they would be used.

These scenarios are extremely detailed, and some are quite disturbing.

The first ever nuclear weapons test ("Trinity") occurred exactly 75 years ago in New Mexico.

On that day––and in the decades that followed––nuclear-armed states destroyed ecosystems, traditional lands, and communities through atmospheric testing. 🧵
fas.org/blogs/security… The harms of nuclear testing have always been disproportionately felt by poor & rural folks, indigenous communities, & previously colonized peoples.

Governments lied about how "safe" nuclear testing was. Affected folks weren't warned about health effects, nor given health care.

A follow-up to last week's Yandex story: Israel's official map has painted over several of its nuclear and military facilities with fake farms and deserts! 🤫

Check out some very weird (and sometimes hilarious) examples in my new piece for @FAScientists
fas.org/blogs/security… Here is Tel-Nof Air Base (one of the Israeli Air Force's most important bases). Just southeast is a suspected storage site for Jericho missiles. They are visible on both Google Earth and Yandex (although Yandex has blurred them).

When a Russian mapping service tried to obscure every military facility in Turkey and Israel, it had the unintended effect of *revealing* the exact locations of over 300 distinct sites (whoops) 😬

See the juicy details in my latest piece for @FAScientists
fas.org/blogs/security… TLDR: Yandex has selectively blurred out 300+ military facilities in Turkey and Israel. Many sites were already known, but many others look completely innocuous through sat imagery (e.g. apartment blocks like this). Blurring indicates that they likely have a military function.