Hans M. Kristensen

Hans M. Kristensen    (academic)
Born	7 April 1961
Nationality	Danish
Member of	Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Federation of American Scientists
Nuclear expert who discovered a draft document on a Pentagon website that proposed a change in U.S. nuclear doctrine to include the possibility of a preemptive nuclear strike.

Hans Møller Kristensen is an expert on nuclear weapons.

He is critical of the development and deployment of nuclear weaponry by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. In 2005 he discovered a draft document on a Pentagon website that proposed a change in U.S. nuclear doctrine to include the possibility of a preemptive nuclear strike. Even though Secretary Rumsfeld had not approved the change, its publication provoked a reaction from some members of Congress.

Career

Having started his career in Greenpeace 1982-1996, Kristensen is director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. He writes about nuclear weapons policy there; he is coauthor of the Nuclear Notebook column in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

His work especially relies on using the Freedom of Information Act to compel US government agencies to release documents. He maintains an on-line overview of the number of nuclear weapons in the world, and writes frequently on the FAS Strategic Security Blog.

Kristensen has lived in the United States since 1991.

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Quotes by Hans M. Kristensen

Page	Quote
US/Nuclear weapons	“[...] the SSBN force, rather than simply being a stable retaliatory capability, with the new super-fuze increasingly will be seen as a front-line, first-strike weapon that is likely to further fuel trigger-happy, worst-case planning in other nuclear-armed states.”
US/Nuclear weapons	“Before the invention of this new fuzing mechanism, even the most accurate ballistic missile warheads might not detonate close enough to targets hardened against nuclear attack to destroy them. But the new super-fuze is designed to destroy fixed targets by detonating above and around a target in a much more effective way. Warheads that would otherwise overfly a target and land too far away will now, because of the new fuzing system, detonate above the target.”
US/Nuclear weapons	“it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike”

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